Black and blue butterfly tattoo on the ribs, with wave patterns filling the wings in a Japanese style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Butterfly with wave pattern on ribs

Japanese · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A butterfly with wide wings and thin antennae sits centrally on the torso, with a hand and dark clothing resting above it. The upper wing panels are solid black, while the lower panels hold blue and white wave patterns with fine linework. The tattoo is mostly blue and black on pale skin, and the image is sharply framed on the body.

Japanese Ribs Butterfly Wave Antennae Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the big top came down in Penzance on Tuesday, and I have been sewing ever since, because Mr Aldous will not pay the riggers until the wings are finished. The butterfly is the last act now. Lottie hangs from the rigging in the black wings you remember from Bristol, the ones Mother cut from her good funeral skirt. Mr Aldous wants them lighter, and I told him there is nothing lighter than a wave if you pin it right. So I have taken the print Dad kept pinned behind the caravan door, the one with the great white curl and the little mountain under it, and cut it into the lower panels in blue silk.

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Last night the audience was eleven people and a dog. Lottie went up anyway, as she always does, and when the lamps dimmed the wings caught the light off the harbour through the tent flap. For a second the whole thing looked like it was moving over water rather than air. Nobody clapped. The dog barked once, and then the tent was very quiet, and I could hear the rope creaking as she turned slowly above us, black on top and blue underneath, like something that had not yet decided where it belonged.

I have sewn the last wave now, and I am writing this by the paraffin lamp with the wings folded across my knees. The black still sits on top where Mother put it. I did not have the heart to change that, and I do not think Lottie would forgive me if I tried.

Come home when your ship docks. Bring some sea with you, even if it is only a jar of it, and we will see whether the silk can hold it. Your loving sister, Ada.