Black and grey botanical tattoo of two roses with dotwork shading inside overlapping geometric lines, placed on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two roses within geometric lines on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two roses in bloom with leaves, drawn in fine linework and stippled dotwork shading that gives the petals depth. Overlapping thin geometric lines and dotted accents form a large angular frame behind and around the flowers. The design is in black ink and greys and sits across the side of the ribcage, with the torso cropped at the chest and hips.

Botanical Geometric Dotwork Ribs Rose Flower Leaves Geometric line Triangle Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ward 9, 03:40. Bed six has stopped asking for the telly and started asking me to describe the rose garden behind his old surveyor's office in Shelford, a place I have never seen. So I make it up. Two bushes against the north wall, I tell him, one cream going pink at the edges, the other the colour of a bruise going off. He nods like I've got it right, then tells me the wall is four foot too low and the shadow falls wrong at noon. He has corrected my angles for three nights now.

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At 04:15 he asks for a biro from the locker and a bit of card. I give him the back of a meal menu. He draws a square first, then lines that cross inside it and out again, sharp as a set square, and dots where he says the light gets in between the lines. His hand shakes, and the lines still come out straight. "Those are the walls," he says. "Everything inside them is allowed to bloom. Outside, nothing gets a say." Then he sketches the two roses in the middle, quick and loose, and I can see he knows exactly how the petals fold over one another.

He dozes before obs at five. I don't wake him for the temperature. I fold the menu in half and tuck it in my lanyard pocket, where it presses against my badge all through handover. By the time the car park goes grey and the first porters come in with their flasks, the card is soft at the creases from my thumb. Written along the bottom edge, in pencil, small enough that I nearly miss it: keep them inside the lines.