Black fine line tattoo of a lit candle in a candlestick holder on the side of a person's torso, above a plaid waistband.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Candle in a holder on the side of the body

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single lit candle sits in a tall candlestick holder, drawn in thin black outline with a small flame rising from the wick. The base of the holder curls out to one side, and the design is unshaded with no added colour. It sits on the side of the torso just above the waistband of plaid underwear, with a hand visible at the top of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You were nineteen the winter the Palais lost its electrics, and Mr Hollis sent you up the back stairs with a box of stubs and a tin of matches. The hall was black as a coal cellar. Someone had to light the sconces on the gallery before the Saturday dance, or the band would not tune up in the dark. So you climbed, one hand on the rail, touching each match to a wick while the crowd below stamped their feet and called for something slow.

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The candlesticks were brass, rescued from a chapel sale, and each had a foot that curled out to one side like a dropped ribbon, so the wax could never sit flat. Mr Hollis said that was to catch the drips. You thought it was vanity. Still, when the first flame stood up straight and steady, the whole gallery seemed to lean toward it, and Ruth Garrow, who had been dancing with a sailor since October, looked up from the floor and raised her hand.

The sailor did not come back after Christmas. Ruth stopped coming on Saturdays too, and you heard later she had gone to an aunt's in Leeds. You kept lighting the candles all the same, because nobody else would climb the stairs in the cold. The electrics were finally fixed in April, and Mr Hollis pulled the stubs from the sconces with his thumb and told you to go home.

Years on, you still cup a hand around a match before you trust it. You think of that narrow gallery, one step from the rail, the room below turning its faces up toward a small light that was yours to hold, and you wonder whether Ruth ever learned to dance without the band.

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