Black and grey tattoo of five moon phases stacked vertically down the centre of a person's back, from full moon at the top to an outlined new moon at the bottom.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Five moon phases down the spine

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A vertical column of five moon phases runs down the centre of the back, following the spine. The top two moons are shaded in greys with crater detail, the middle two are mostly solid black with a lit edge, and the lowest is a simple outline. The subject's back is shown from behind against a plain pale background, with the tattoo clearly visible.

Realism Blackwork Back Moon Moon phase Celestial Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer, the pair of you, where the lamp can reach your faces. No, the apple crates will hold you. The summer my father kept the orchard at Pell's Bottom, the moon came down into the Lady Fenwick pear tree and stuck in the fork of it, the way a kite does when the wind drops.

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It was full that night, pale as a side plate and pitted like a cheese left out on the sill. My father climbed the ladder with a hessian sack and a bad temper, because he had forty trees to pick by Monday and no patience for the sky's nonsense. He got the moon into the sack, but it was heavy and wanted to be elsewhere, so each night it worked itself out a little at a time. First it went to a lopsided half, then to a sliver like a paring, then to nothing but a hoop of dark. Every evening he climbed up to shake it loose and came down with the sack a bit lighter.

His wife said leave it be. She said a moon that wants to go will go, and the orchard would drink the light it left behind. He would not hear it. He sat on the top rung with his boots in the blossom and talked to it like a stubborn dog, until one still night the last ring slid off the branch and rolled down the hill into the mill pond, where it lay all winter like a dropped coin.

So if you walk out past the wall at Pell's Bottom tonight, look for the pear tree. The fork is empty now, and the bark there is smooth, but you can still see where the moon sat, five pale rings worn into the wood, one above the other, going down toward the roots. That is where the light went, and that is why the pears are always sweetest in the year it's dark.