Wild rose tattoo with pink-washed petals and black and grey leaves and stems across a woman's shoulder and upper arm.

Wild rose tattoo on a shoulder

Botanical · Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A wild rose in bloom sits on the shoulder, with its stems and several leaves trailing down over the upper arm. The petals are outlined and filled with a soft pink wash, while the leaves and stems are shaded in black and grey with visible veining. The close crop centres the flower near the collarbone against a blurred pale background.

Botanical Shoulder Upper arm Rose Flower Petal Leaves Stem Branch

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The council man wanted the whole hedge down by Friday, every stem of it, so the lorry could get through the bend at Coldharbour. I told him the dog rose had been there longer than the tarmac, and he looked at me the way you look at a dog that has started talking. My father pushed the first cutting into that bank the spring I was born, using his thumb, and he swore it would take if you left it alone.

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I went down at dusk with my secateurs and a torch, which was foolish, because the light was all I needed. The flowers had mostly gone over, their petals lying on the verge like scraps of pink silk, but the leaves were still dark and glossy and the stems ran up the bank in long arches, catching on my sleeve every time I reached. Under the third leaf I found a bud nobody had told yet that it was late. It was the colour of a cheap sweet, wet at the tip.

I cut only the stems that crossed the road line and left the rest, and I stood there with the cuttings in a bin bag feeling like a thief in my own parish. Mrs Ashdown from number nine came out in her dressing gown to see what the noise was about. I told her the truth, which was that I had changed my mind about something for once.

The lorry came in October. The driver stopped where the bank bent, wound his window down and said the hedge had been cut back a good yard, which was all that was needed. Hips were already swelling red along the branches above him, and he reached up and picked one without asking, turning it between finger and thumb like a man checking a coin.