Black and grey roses with leaves and fine sprigs tattooed on the upper arm, shaded in a dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two roses on an upper arm

Botanical · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

Two open roses with shaded petals and bold black outlines sit on the upper arm, with leaves and thin sprigs trailing beside them. The petals are built from fine stippling and hatching, giving them texture and depth. The palette is entirely black and grey on pale skin, photographed against a dark door and patterned black fabric.

Botanical Dotwork Upper arm Rose Leaf Sprig Dotted circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

No, sit closer, the fire won't carry my voice to the back of the barn. Old Edwin swore the roses at the forest edge were planted before the church and before the mill, when the beeches came right up to the ditch. He also swore he once carried a bishop across the river on his back, so weigh that as you like.

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Two sisters lived in the last cottage before the trees, Maud and Isobel, and they were the only ones in the parish who would walk under the beeches after the bell. The village wanted a road cut through to the market town. The wood wanted nothing of the sort. Every spring the saws jammed in the cut and the men went home with thorns in their palms, though there were no roses within a mile. Maud laid a dotted ring of white stones around the stump of the first oak and said the wood would open its gate when the ring was whole. Isobel laughed, then went out with a lantern and counted. Twenty-two stones. She counted again. Twenty-three, and one still warm.

Here is the part Edwin always got wrong. The roses did not bloom for the sisters. They bloomed where the sisters had been kind to the dead, so the wood sent back two flowers, one for each of them, shaded like smoke on a wet morning, their leaves turned towards the house. The road was never cut. The saws still jam.

And when you pass that cottage at dusk, you will find a green sprig tied to the gate, and nobody in the village will say who put it there. Mind the stile on your way out, the third step is loose, and do not pick anything you cannot name.