Four black and grey shaded butterflies tattooed on the upper back, decreasing in size from the lower left towards the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four butterflies across the upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

Four butterflies in black and grey sit across the upper back, with the largest at the lower left and the smallest near the neck. Each has outlined wings with soft grey shading that suggests depth and form. The pale skin and the simple scatter of the figures leave plenty of open space around the tattoo.

Back Butterfly

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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

Mind the drip off the awning, and budge up, because I'm not starting until the tall lad stops dripping on the cabbages. Right. Four butterflies came into Hollin Market the week the rain set in, and nobody saw them land. Ada on the fish stall swore they were moths that had lost their nerve.

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The biggest one settled on the wet slab outside the pie van and would not be shifted. Mr Okafor tried a broom, then a tea towel, then a folded Sunday paper, and it only opened and closed its wings slowly, like someone counting out coins. The smaller ones kept rising and dropping above the clock on St Brannock's, and one of them always hung a little lower than the others, as if it had been told to wait.

Ada's granddaughter, Nell, was seven and had a jam jar of pennies she was saving to buy a bird. She sat on an upturned crate with her chin on her knees and watched the big one for an hour. When the rain finally thinned and the stalls began to fold, the butterfly lifted off the slab, the others came down to meet it, and all four went over the roofs toward the river without a single flap wasted.

Nell kept her pennies. She said the butterflies had paid her in a different way, by making a grey afternoon look as though someone had planned it. Ask anyone who was there and they'll tell you the big one was the last to leave, which is how you knew it was the one in charge.