Black and grey tattoo of an astronaut on a lunar surface holding a cratered moon balloon, placed on the upper arm.

Astronaut holding a moon balloon on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A standing astronaut in a bulky spacesuit holds a string attached to a balloon shaped like a cratered moon, with small rocks scattered across the ground beneath the feet. The linework is bold and outlined, with light grey shading on the helmet, suit folds and moon surface. The design is centred on the upper arm, with the moon balloon rising above the figure against plain skin.

Upper arm Astronaut Moon Balloon Space Rock Helmet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dilys Harrow had sold balloons on Morecambe pier for thirty-one summers, and she knew the difference between a child who wanted a balloon and one who wanted the sky. The boy at her rail that Tuesday wanted the moon. He had a grey sweatshirt with a frayed cuff and a ten-pence piece clutched in one fist, and when she told him the moon balloons were for the older ones, he only held out the coin and waited.

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She had one left, a cratered silver thing she'd ordered from a catalogue in a fit of optimism and never shifted. She tied it to a length of kite string, the way her father used to, and handed it over. The boy walked to the end of the pier, where the railings gave out and the wind came off the bay with nothing in its way, and he stood there the way men stand in old photographs, one boot forward, head tipped back, the moon bobbing above him on its patient line.

When he came back, the walk had changed. Each step was slow and square, as if the boards were a long way down, and the sweatshirt had puffed into something stiff and white, with a backpack and a round glass helmet that caught the lamplight. He lifted the visor at her stall. There was no face inside, only her own reflection, grey-haired and startled, holding out a hand. "Gravity's gone lazy up there," he said, in a voice like a radio left on in another room. "I'll bring it back Thursday."

He pressed the coin into her palm and went. When she opened her hand it was no ten-pence piece but a small grey stone, cool and pitted like the balloon, with a crater worn across one edge. She put it in the till drawer beside the change. He never did bring the balloon back, but on Thursdays she still walked to the end of the pier and looked up, and the sky over the bay seemed to her a little less full than it had been.