Black ink tattoo of a large butterfly formed from many small butterflies, with a trail of them drifting upward, on the side of a person's torso.

Butterfly made of smaller butterflies on the side

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large butterfly outline is built entirely from many small black butterfly silhouettes, with the wings and body filled in by clusters of tiny shapes. A smaller trail of butterflies drifts up and to the right from the top of the design. The ink is solid black on pale skin, with a white cloth visible at the bottom edge of the photo.

Ribs Butterfly Insect Trail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Ballroom at the Pier shut at eleven, and at ten to, the band was still playing a waltz nobody had asked for. Mo Garrity leaned against the cloakroom hatch with her coat over one arm, watching the last couples turn under the mirror ball. Light spilled across the sprung floor in small white coins, and somewhere behind the stage a radiator knocked like someone wanting to be let in.

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Lorraine Ashby was counting the takings into a biscuit tin on the piano lid. "You're not off yet," she said without looking up. "Ada's still got the dance cards." Ada Pryce had spent the whole evening folding them. Each girl who sat out a number tore a corner from her card, creased it twice and pinched it into a paper butterfly. By midnight the cloakroom ledge was crowded with them, pencilled wings and crooked bodies, waiting for someone to claim them. Ada had given up on the men years ago, Lorraine said, and started on the moths instead.

Mo picked one up. On its wing, in faded pencil, was the name Eddie and the date of the storm dance, 1952. She remembered him, though she had tried not to. He had danced with every girl in the hall but her, and she had folded his card into a butterfly anyway and let the draught from the open door take it. Now the cold came up off the water again, and a swarm lifted from the ledge, sliding past the mirror ball toward the stairs.

"Leave them," Lorraine said. "They know the way out." Mo watched them go down the stairwell in a loose, uneven line, catching the light, and found she was smiling, which she had not expected. She took nothing home. The last one she left on the piano lid beside the tin, its folded corner still showing a name she no longer needed to read.