Colourful butterfly tattoos in green, yellow and pink with black vines and small stars across the top of a foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterflies and vines across a foot

Other · Colour · Photo

Three butterflies with black-outlined wings in green, yellow and pink are linked by black swirling vines, green leaves and small star shapes. The butterflies are shaded with soft gradients inside the bold black outlines, and they run diagonally from the upper foot towards the toes. The bright colours stand out against the pale skin and the light background.

Other Butterfly Vine Leaves Star Swirl Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At ten past three the corridor on Ward 7 smells of hand gel and cold toast, and you are the only one pushing the linen trolley past the nurses' station. The lamp is still on in bay two. Behind you the lift doors sigh open, and you don't look round, because at night you learn not to look at things that aren't yours to fix.

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Then you see them. Taped to the glass above the sluice door are three paper butterflies, lime green, marigold and a pink like the inside of a shell. Black lines trace their wings, and a trail of drawn vines runs between them with little ink stars scattered in the gaps. Nobody on days would have put them there. They were made in a hurry by a child who had been told to be quiet.

You stop the trolley and the corridor hums around you. You peel off the green one and turn it over. On the back, in careful pencil, someone has written 'Tilly, age 6, for the lady in 4 who can't sleep.' You take it down the corridor to bay four. The woman in the bed is awake, her hands folded over the blanket, and when you hold the paper up she laughs softly and asks you to tape it where she can see it.

Back at the station you tape the other two beside it, arranging them so they drift from the lintel down towards the floor, the way the vines seem to want to go. At six the day shift arrives and asks who did the decorating. You shrug and say it was probably the night, which is true enough.