Black stencil-style design of a candle with a stars and stripes flag pattern on its body, a flame above, and a banner reading NEVER FORGET and 9-11-01.

Candle with flag and Never Forget banner

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black silhouette of a candle with a flame at the top, its wax body filled with a stars and stripes pattern. A curved banner across the base reads NEVER FORGET in stencil-style letters, with 9-11-01 set in bold block characters to the lower right. The design uses flat black fills and white cut-out details with no shading or colour.

Candle Flame Flag Star Stripe Banner

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wax had gone soft in the back of the van, so Ruth carried the box into the kitchen in both arms, the way you'd carry a sleeping child up the stairs. Forty-one church candles, each one wrapped in newspaper gone yellow at the folds. Gordon had written on every tag in his square capitals, VIGIL, and the date underneath, though in twenty years he had never once written a word he didn't mean to keep.

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They had stood on the green that night with the whole village, and the wind kept putting out their matches. Someone had printed a flag at the library and stuck it to a lolly stick behind the wax, and it snapped in the draught, stripes rippling over the flame like a sail that would not settle. Gordon cupped his hands round one wick for a long time. When it finally caught he said nothing, just stood there with his palms still curved, as if the light might escape if he let go.

Ruth unwrapped the one at the top of the pile. The paper had stuck to the flag, and the stars had bled a little into the wax, six white points gone soft at the edges. She set it on the table by the bread bin and sat across from it with the matches. It took three goes. The stripes went first, licked up one by one, then the stars, and then there was only the wick standing black and bent in the middle of the wax, still holding its shape.