Black and grey realistic butterfly wings tattoo across a woman's upper back, photographed from behind in black and white.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly wings tattoo across upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing a pair of butterfly wings tattooed across her upper back between the shoulder blades. The wings have shaded grey and black detailing with fine vein-like markings and dark edges. The black and white photograph is framed closely on the shoulders and back, with a patterned halter strap at the neck and a blurred garden behind.

Realism Back Butterfly Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the Palais Rosa ever saw Vera Lusk without a coat over her arm, because the cloakroom was the only place she could stand still long enough to be looked at. I played tenor sax in Ray Hollis's band that winter, and every Saturday I watched her across the hall, lifting hangers and handing back tickets with a neat little tilt of her chin.

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In February the Sunday matinee was cancelled for snow, and she came in anyway carrying a flat parcel in brown paper. Inside were a pair of wings she had cut from an old photograph of a swallowtail, enlarged at the chemist on the front and traced onto grey silk, with the veins picked out in black thread. She had sewn them to a harness of elastic and tape. "Hold still," she said, and fixed the straps while the band tuned up through the wall.

The Saturday revue was her first solo, and the wings caught the spotlight so that for a few bars the whole room seemed to lift off the floor. People stood up to see. Hollis had to count her back in twice.

After closing, the manager found the wings hung on the cloakroom hook, the silk still faintly warm from the lamps. Vera had gone out by the back stairs and never came in again. One black thread had come loose at the edge of the left wing, and I still keep it wound round the case of my mouthpiece, in case she ever comes back for it.