Black and grey crescent moon tattoo with a monogram, swirling tribal-style linework and small stars on the side of a person's torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crescent moon and stars on the side

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A crescent moon sits at the centre of the design, with a stylised letter-like monogram inside its curve. Black swirls and small five-pointed stars trail up and down the composition, with solid black fill on the moon and fine detail in the surrounding ornament. The tattoo is shown in black ink on smooth skin against a plain background.

Back Crescent moon Moon Star Swirl Monogram Letter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mum's wedding present was supposed to be simple. A crescent moon on the bow of Dennis's old clinker dinghy, the one he had kept tied off at Cromer since 1978, with his initial curled inside the curve like a hook. I had the brushes, a pot of gold leaf and two nights before the vows. I did not have a steady hand, which I discovered at eleven o'clock on the Friday, when the first stroke wobbled and the moon came out looking like a sleeping cat.

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Dennis came down the shingle in his carpet slippers to see what the fuss was about. He didn't mention the cat. He took the brush from me, dipped it in the black enamel and started on the stars, five points each, quick as a man signing a cheque. 'Your nan did the swirls on the rudder,' he said. 'I always wondered where they came from.' We worked until the lamp on the harbour wall went out and the tide was licking at the hull.

By morning the letter inside the moon was finished, a looping D that from the car park looked like a fish hook or a swan with its neck tucked in. Mum cried when she saw it. Then she asked who had done the stars, and I said Dennis, and she said it was the first thing he had ever painted that wasn't a fence.

We launched the boat at dusk, the day after the wedding, with the bunting still strung along the promenade. The crescent caught the last of the light and laid a thin silver line across the grey water, the only gold for miles along that coast.