Black ink line drawing of a luna moth between two blossoms and a bud, framed by circles and arcs, shown as a tattoo design with no body placement.

Luna moth with flowers and geometric arcs

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing of a luna moth with spread wings, centred on a vertical axis. A large open blossom sits at the top with two smaller flowers on either side, and a closed bud sits at the base, all linked by fine construction lines, arcs and circles. The shading is hatched and stippled in black on white, with no colour.

Botanical Geometric Moth Flower Blossom Bud Circle Arc Crescent

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

My grandfather never trusted a garden he had not measured twice. Every spring he came up the lane with a ball of green string, two pegs and a brass compass that had belonged to a surveyor who once drew our parish, and he would kneel in the wet grass until he had found the true middle of whatever he meant to plant.

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The summer I was nine, he chose the middle of the orchard by drawing arcs. He pegged one end of the string to the old damson, swung the other end round until it touched the wall, then swung it back until the two circles crossed like a pair of half-closed eyes. Where they met he pushed in a stake. That stake was where the moths came, every night in July, drawn to the white paint on the gate post.

They were luna moths, pale green as a bruised apple, with eyes on their wings like coins pressed into cloth. Grandfather said they lived only a week as adults, that they had no mouths and spent their whole short life on what they had stored up as caterpillars. I asked whether that was sad. He said it was arithmetic, and that the arithmetic was kinder than people thought.

The night before he died I found the stake pulled out and the string lying in a neat loop on the back step, the knot still tied to the damson. Beside it a single moth sat with its wings flat and did not move. I pegged the string back myself, swung the arc, and found the middle a little left of where I had expected. I planted the bulbs there anyway, and this autumn the blossom came up true.