Geometric lion tattoo on a forearm

The lion went in on Thursday, and Mr Okafor made me hold the lead came while he soldered the last joint, so you can tell Mother I was not idle. He had cut the whole beast from offcuts nobody else would take: a turquoise that goes grey when the light drops, a blue like the inside of a mussel shell, three greens he swore were the same and were not, and a violet that bruises to pink at the edges where the sun gets in. Every piece is flat and angular, a facet for each plane of his face, so from the street he reads as a lion and up close he is only glass.

The dance hall paid for him, though the committee wanted a crown on his head and Mr Okafor refused. He said a lion does not need a crown to be looked up at. They hung him above the doors of the Crescent ballroom, where the dancers come out at midnight into the cold and stand beneath him to light their cigarettes. On Wednesday I stood on the pavement with a cup of tea and watched a young man in a borrowed suit tilt his head back to study the mane, then take his girl's hand and walk her straight through the doors.

I keep thinking about the eyes. Mr Okafor set them in two pieces of pale glass that catch whatever comes down the street: headlamps, the lamplighter's pole, the moon on a wet road. He would not let me touch them. He said that was the one part of a lion that had to be left to the weather.

Write soon, and tell me whether Dad has finally bought a new kettle.

Love, Ada