Black blackwork sun with a solid filled centre and flame-like rays, tattooed on a woman's upper back beside the shoulder blade.

Black sun tattoo on a shoulder blade

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black circle forms the centre of a sun, surrounded by eight curved, flame-like rays that taper to points. The shading is solid black ink with a slightly speckled texture in the centre disc and no visible grey tones. The tattoo sits off-centre on the upper back, with the subject photographed from behind in soft daylight against a blurred green background.

Blackwork Back Sun Ray Circle Flame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At three in the morning on Ward Six the corridor lights go amber and nobody expects anything of you but the next round of obs. Bed nine had rung twice already. When I got there Mr Haddon was sitting up with his hands flat on the blanket, and he asked if I had a pen that worked. I found a black fineliner in the drawer of the trolley and he took it from me the way a man takes a cigarette.

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He drew on the back of a discharge leaflet. First a circle, pressed so hard it dented the paper, then rays that curled and tapered like flames that had decided to go somewhere. 'Every sun I ever saw from the allotment was white,' he said, 'so I've never trusted them.' He stippled the disc with tiny stabs of the nib until it looked speckled, like wet soil, and then he held it up to the strip light and squinted at it.

'Night sun,' he said. 'Gives you something to look at when the proper one's switched off.' I told him the day staff would be in at seven and he could show them. He said they'd only tell him it was lovely and file it. He folded the leaflet into a square and pushed it into my hand, asking me to keep it somewhere dry.

I put it in my top pocket and did my rounds. At half six the window at the end of the corridor went grey, then pale, and I took the leaflet out. The black sun sat on the back of the cardiac advice, its rays still faintly shining at the tips. Mr Haddon had died at four, quietly, and nobody had thought to tell me until handover. I didn't throw it away. I pinned it above the sluice sink, where the morning never reaches, and left it there to be the only sun on the ward.