Black and grey dotwork butterfly tattoo with detailed wings and antennae on the inner forearm, with part of a mandala design visible at the lower left.

Butterfly tattoo on the forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A large butterfly with open wings and thin antennae is tattooed on the arm, with its body drawn in fine linework. The wings are shaded with stippled dots that fade from dark edges to pale centres, and the veins and wing markings are outlined in clean black lines. A section of a mandala-style pattern sits at the lower left edge of the frame, and the background is out of focus.

Dotwork Forearm Butterfly Wing Antennae Mandala

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the moth man came back to the island on Tuesday's boat, the one with the green canvas sails, and he asked for you by name before he asked for the tea. I told him you had gone to Lerwick to learn the telegraph, which is true, though I did not tell him you took the blue tin of pins with you. He stood on the slipway with his hat in his hands and looked at the cliffs as if they owed him money.

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Father says the Admiralty chart still shows the rock where the Helen Gray went down, and that the butterflies came up off the water that autumn, thousands of them, pale wings pressed flat to the spray like paper that would not blow away. You remember it differently, you always did. You said they were wings still wet from the chrysalis, waiting for a wind that never came, and you stood on the wall and counted them until your lips went blue.

The moth man left you a box. I have not opened it. It is heavy for its size and smells of camphor and salt, and there is a card tucked under the string in his square capitals that says only, FOR THE ONE WHO COUNTED. I put it on the dresser beside the barometer, where you used to set your pins in a row.

The glass has dropped since dawn. Father says the wind backs northerly by evening, and the gulls are already standing with their backs to it. Come home when the boats come in, or write and tell me which of the two of us is supposed to be brave about this. I will keep the kettle on either way.

Your sister, Margaret