Colour realism tattoo of a monarch butterfly resting on red flower petals with green leaves, on the side of the torso.

Monarch butterfly on a red flower

Realism · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A monarch butterfly with black-veined orange wings rests on a large red flower with pink and cream petals and a yellow centre. Green leaves sit at the lower left, and the flower spills across the skin in a diagonal composition. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft highlights on the petals and wings.

Realism Botanical Ribs Monarch butterfly Butterfly Flower Petal Leaves Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Margaret,

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The monarchs came over the south wall the morning after the frost took the dahlia bed, and Prior Edwin has decided it is a sign, though he decides that about most things. I told him a butterfly on a flower is only a butterfly on a flower, which is the sort of remark that earns me a week of Compline in silence.

The dahlia in question is the deep red one Brother Thomas raised from a tuber he carried up from Penzance forty years ago. He has no teeth left and no patience for anything that does not bloom on time, but he sat on an upturned bucket all morning watching that one flower, the way you used to watch the kettle. When the monarch landed on the open head, its wings folding and unfolding like a slow prayer, he did not say a word. He only raised one thick finger and made a small circle in the air, which means keep still.

I kept still. We all did, the three of us who were out with the rakes, until the butterfly lifted and drifted off towards the orchard. Thomas said the seed would be saved then, and he sent me to the shed for paper bags. I have been labelling them since, in my worst handwriting, which he says is an improvement on my first.

I am sending you one of the pressed petals in this envelope. It has gone the colour of old claret, and it smells faintly of pepper and rain. Do not tell Edwin I have been stealing from the garden. Tell him instead that the monarchs have gone south, which is true, and that they will come back in spring, which is what he likes to hear. Your brother, Anselm.