Colour tattoo of two glowing fireflies inside a glass jar on the inner forearm, with loose red splashes and black drips around it.

Fireflies in a glass jar on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A jar with a lid sits on the forearm, holding two fireflies with yellow abdomens, red-tinged heads and dark bodies. The jar is drawn with loose black sketch lines and soft grey shading, and the fireflies are rendered with bold yellow and red colour. Red washes, black drips and a dotted black band frame the design across the arm.

Forearm Jar Insect

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Gran kept the jar on the windowsill above the sink, the one with the zinc lid that never quite sealed, and every July she let me fill it. We went out after tea, when the lawn was still warm under our bare feet and the hedge at the bottom had gone the colour of ink. The fireflies came up out of the long grass like sparks off a bonfire that had forgotten to go out. You had to be quick and gentle, cupping your hands, because they bruised easily and Gran said a bruised light was no use to anybody.

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That summer I wanted the jar to glow all year. I asked her how long they lasted, and she said a fortnight if you were lucky, and I decided I would be the lucky one. I kept two in it on my bedside table, feeding them bits of windfall apple and dabbing the glass with a wet flannel so they could see out. Every night the yellow in their bellies dimmed a little more, like a hob being turned down by somebody who had forgotten the pan.

On the last evening of August the lid was loose and the cat was on the sill. I found the jar on the lawn in the morning, lid rolled into the rhubarb, the glass wet with dew and empty except for one beetle with its wings folded flat. Gran was already out with the shears. She didn't scold me. She took the jar, unscrewed what was left of the lid, and held it upside down over the grass until the last one crawled out, slow as a tired sentence.

I watched it climb onto a stem of lavender and stay there, not glowing, just sitting in the dusk. Then, very faintly, it lit up once, as if it had remembered something, and went out again. Gran rinsed the jar under the outside tap and set it back on the windowsill, lid off, for next year.