Small black dragonfly tattoo with stippled wings and a long thin body on the forearm, with woven bracelets at the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragonfly on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single dragonfly is tattooed on the forearm, with a rounded head, wings spread horizontally and a long, thin body line running straight down. The wings are built from fine dots and stipple, while the head and body are solid black. The background shows woven bracelets at the wrist and blurred stone and grass.

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find it on the stairwell landing of Ashcombe House, between the seventh and eighth floors, where the strip light buzzes and the lift has been out since March. It is pressed against the wired glass of the window, wings flat, body dead straight. Mrs Okafor from flat 42 says it's a sign the council will finally come. You tell her dragonflies don't read notices.

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The trouble is the shape of it. Nobody on the estate has seen one this high up. The nearest water is the balancing pond behind the car park, a green skin with a shopping trolley sunk in one corner, and you have never once seen anything over it that wasn't a gull. Still, you cup your hands, carry it down eight flights, and feel its feet tickle your palm like someone writing a very small letter.

At the bottom you push the fire door open and the evening comes in warm, smelling of cut grass and hot tarmac. The dragonfly lifts off without any fuss, tilts once over the pond, then climbs past the car park lights, past the balconies, a thin dark stroke rising above the washing lines. You stand there until your neck aches, counting floors out of habit.

Upstairs, the lift doors open with a cough. Mrs Okafor is inside with her shopping bags, looking at you as though you've been lying to her for years. "Well," she says, "it's working now." You don't tell her it was never the lift.

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