Black and grey tattoo of two roses in shaded linework on a shoulder and upper arm, with a dark top and white pillow in the background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two roses on a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two open roses, one smaller and higher on the shoulder and a larger one overlapping it towards the upper arm. The petals are drawn in dark outline with soft grey shading that builds depth and curl. The photograph is taken at an angle in warm, dim light against a black top and a white pillow, with the tattoo as the clear focus.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Rose Flower Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Pull your chair nearer the range, and mind the cat, she has her eye on the butter. The frost came down on Fenny Farm the winter the water butt split, and the whole yard went grey as a pewter plate. There were two roses by the back gate then. The little one had been put in by Tom's mother the spring she married, a cutting off a wall in Wisbech, and she planted it on the wrong side of the house where the wind comes off the dyke. It sulked for years. The big one came later, a sucker the old dog dug out of the hedge, and Tom set it on the other side of the gate because he said a yard wants something tall.

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The big one grew like it was angry. By the time the children were old enough to climb, it had thrown its arms over the little rose and near smothered it, thorns in every fold. Nobody thought to cut it back, because nobody wanted to be the one who hurt a thing that was doing so well. That January the frost went hard enough to crack the gate hinge, and Ada, who was nine and stubborn as a gatepost, went out before breakfast with the secateurs in her coat pocket and a lantern in her fist.

She cut the big rose back to the green wood, an armful at a time, and the thorns went through her mittens. Her mother shouted from the door and then came out to help her drag the cuttings to the heap. When the sun got up over the dyke, the little rose stood in the light for the first time in its life, dripping with melt and looking very pleased with itself. Ada still says it knew who had done it. Her dad said roses don't know anything. Then every morning he stood by that gate with his cup going cold, looking at the two of them, and he never once told her to put the secateurs away.