Traditional style tattoo of a black and brown lit match with grey smoke rising, framed by red and grey tattoo work on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lit match with smoke in traditional style

Traditional · Other · Mixed · Photo

A lit match with a black head and a brown wooden stick rises from the centre of the frame, with a grey wisp of smoke curling up to the right. The bold black outlines and flat fills are typical of traditional tattooing. Red, grey and yellow tattoo work surrounds the match, and the pale skin background shows through the open areas.

Traditional Other Smoke Feather Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The pump station at Caddo Wells finally burned down on Tuesday, and I have to tell you I was the one who struck the match that started it, though I only meant it for the stove. The wind off the flats had got into the cellar and nobody thought to check the drums. Pete Halloran swears he saw a hawk circling the chimney that morning, which is the sort of thing Pete says when he has been sober three days and wants a reason for something.

Anyway, I sat on the bonnet of the Ford with the box in my palm and watched the smoke go sideways across the road, grey and thin, like a ribbon somebody had tied to nothing. The head caught on the second strike. I remember thinking how small it was for everything it was about to do, and how Dad used to say a man should respect any flame that size because it had already decided what it wanted.

The inspector drove out from Barstow at noon and took my statement under a sheet of tin. He wrote that the fire was accidental. He did not write that I dropped the spent stick in the sand and stood on it for a long time, because I wanted to be certain. I am telling you now so that someone knows.

Come out in spring if the road's open. I'll show you the place, and the feathers the wind keeps bringing up from the dead ground, red and yellow and blue-black, as if someone spilled a paint tin across the dunes.

Love, Frank