Black and grey tattoo of two roses in outline and soft shading, placed on the top of a shoulder and upper arm.

Two roses on a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two open roses, one larger and higher on the shoulder and one lower and to the right, with a few leaves and petals drawn around them. The linework is dark and defined, with grey shading that gives the petals depth and volume. The photo is taken close up and at a slight angle in warm light, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame and a dark top visible on the left.

Botanical Shoulder Rose Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third lorry from Aalsmeer reached the Dover freight lanes just after five, and Hannah Pryce climbed onto its tail with a torch in her teeth. Forty-two crates of roses sat in the cold, their heads wrapped in brown paper and bowed like mourners. The manifest said Dutch-grown, forced under glass, but the stems had a hard, pale look that reminded her of a family allotment she had not visited in years. She checked the seals, the pallets and the chalk tally marks, and everything agreed except the driver's ledger, which listed one crate fewer than the lorry carried.

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The driver, Tadas, did not argue. He climbed down from the cab with a battered sketchbook instead and held it open at the first page. Pencil roses filled it, dozens of them, each one shaded darker toward the heart. 'My sister grows them outside Kaunas,' he said. 'She sends me a photograph every spring. I draw them before they wilt, so I remember which was the good year.' Hannah turned the pages slowly under the lamp. Two roses kept returning, one set high and one lower and to the right, their outer petals curling like the edges of old letters.

She had a form to sign, a seal to break and a schedule that did not care about sketchbooks. Instead she found the missing crate wedged behind the cab, labelled in marker with only the word KAUNAS, and wrote the discrepancy in neat block capitals. She stamped the manifest and let the lorry roll on towards London. Before the gate closed she tore a page from her own notebook, drew two roses in soft grey pencil, and tucked it into her breast pocket. It weighed nothing at all, and she kept it all the same.