Fine line black tattoo of two roses on a stem with a leaf, sitting on the outer upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two roses with stems on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two roses in outline, one slightly higher and one lower, joined by a long thin stem with a small bud and leaves. The linework is clean and single weight, with no shading, so the flowers read as black outlines on pale skin. The design sits on the upper arm against a plain pale background, with a white sleeve at the top right edge of the frame.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Rose Rose bud Leaf Stem Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bush by the back wall came from Mam's yard in Shildon, a bare stick wrapped in wet newspaper, and it took three winters to forgive us for the move. Dan said it was sulking. I said it wanted better soil than slack and pit-wash. We argued about it the way we argued about everything that first year, with the kettle on and the back door open so the neighbours could hear every word.

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Dan went down at six each morning with his lamp pinned to his cap and his bait in a tin, and I learned to keep the shape of his day in my head: the hooter, the long wait, the walk back up Front Street with the dust still in the creases of his neck. On the Thursday the hooter went late. I stood at the gate with my hand on the latch until my knuckles ached, and I counted the lamps coming up the bank the way Mam counted stitches.

He came up last, grey to the eyebrows, a roof fall at the face having kept him three hours past his time. He put his hand in his pocket and gave me a handkerchief knotted at the corners. Inside was a rosebud snapped from the bush outside the Institute, still tight and green at the tip. He said a bud was only a promise until it opened, and that he'd made me one. I told him he was daft. We planted it that night beside the first, by lamplight, and by June the two had grown into each other, one a little higher up the wall. I still couldn't tell you which of them leaned in first.