Black and grey dotwork tattoo of an anatomical heart with a skeleton holding a crescent moon inside, on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anatomical heart with skeleton and crescent moon

Dotwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

An anatomical heart with its vessels and chambers drawn in bold outline and fine hatched lines sits at the centre of the design. Inside the heart, a skeleton holds a crescent moon beside small star shapes, with the interior filled with stippled dotwork shading. The tattoo is rendered entirely in black and grey ink.

Dotwork Traditional Other Heart Anatomical heart Skeleton Crescent moon Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I have the night watch at the Surgeons' Hall again, which means my only company is the moths and Dr Harrow's wax heart in the long gallery. You will laugh, but the thing has begun to keep me company. Last Tuesday I held my lamp close to its case and saw, through the open chamber on the left, a small round room lit by stars that someone had pricked into the dark with a very fine needle.

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There is a skeleton in there, sitting cross-legged with a crescent moon held up in one bony hand like a lantern. Its ribs are the same grey as the hatched vessels that curl around the outside of the heart. I told it about the cabbage cart that overturned on Lothian Road and the cat that has been sleeping on the porter's coat. It did not answer, but when I finished it tilted the moon towards me, and I took that as manners.

Today I found the donation ledger in the back office. The heart came from a sailor's widow in Leith, dated 1871, with a note in the margin: keep it where someone sits up late. I do not believe in such things, Nell, but I did not believe in cats on coats either, until one arrived.

So tonight I have left my lamp burning on the windowsill and hung my father's pocket watch on the brass hook beside the case, where its ticking can carry in the quiet. The moon in the heart is still lifted. I think it means to keep watch too. Write soon, and tell Mother the moths are behaving.