Watercolour-style dragonfly tattoo in blues, greens and pinks on a person's upper back, with the words never give up in black cursive script beneath it.

Blue and green dragonfly with script on upper back

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large dragonfly with softly blended wings in blue, green, pink and turquoise sits across the upper back, with its body running diagonally. Below the wings, the words never give up are written in black cursive script, with crisp, dark lines contrasting the washed colour of the insect. The photograph is taken from behind, showing only the shoulder and a teal and navy top strap, with a brick wall in the background.

Lettering Back Dragonfly Insect Script Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pond behind the allotment shed has been silting up since spring, and you have spent three Saturdays with a rake and a bucket, hauling out blanket weed while Mrs Okonedo next door shouts instructions over the hedge. Nobody else bothers with the water any more. The frogs left in May. What remains is the pump, a rusted sundial someone sank as a joke, and the reeds that grow thicker every week.

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On the fourth Saturday you find the nymph. It is clinging to a stalk of yellow iris, brown and armoured, its eyes like wet beads. You almost leave it alone, but the sun is coming up over the bramble and the stalk is leaning toward the water, so you crouch and steady it with two fingers. Hours later, when you come back with a flask of tea, the shell has split down its back and a dragonfly is drying there in the light, wings folded like wet tissue, blue and green and a blush of pink creeping into them as though someone were pouring paint through glass.

Your father's handwriting is still on the shed door, pencilled in the corner where he marked the seasons: never give up, underlined twice. You used to think it was a joke about the marrows. Standing there with the empty flask, you understand it was meant for the pond, and for the thing trying to climb out of it, and maybe for you too.