Colour realism tattoo of a monarch butterfly with a soft grey shadow, on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Monarch butterfly on a shoulder blade

Realism · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A three-dimensional monarch butterfly sits on the upper back near the shoulder blade, with its wings angled outwards. The wings use orange, yellow and red fills with black veins and spotted black borders, and a grey shadow beneath the butterfly creates a lifted effect. The photograph is taken from behind and above, showing the tattoo against the skin and a dark sleeveless top.

Realism Shoulder Butterfly Monarch butterfly Wing Shadow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down by the stove, and mind the cat, she's been sulking since Tuesday. Now, this is the one about the monarch that flew into Mrs Tully's laundrette on Hollins Road the night the power went out across Oldham. Nobody saw it come in. She swore it was there first, pinned to the notice board between a lost terrier and a sofa for sale, orange as a fire in a grate.

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Her grandson Ray was the one who noticed the shadow. Under the butterfly, on the cracked lino, lay a grey smudge the exact shape of its wings, a good inch lower than it had any right to be, as if the thing were hovering over a floor that had dropped away. Ray tried to shoo it with a rolled-up newspaper. It lifted, sure enough, but only as far as the dryers, and there it sat, turning its wings slow, the way a man counts coins before he decides to spend them.

It stayed three nights. The machines went round, the streetlamp outside buzzed like a trapped wasp, and every morning the shadow was still there, a little longer and a little further from the wings. On the fourth night the power came back with a clunk and the butterfly went out through the gap under the door, no hurry about it, heading south over the chimneys towards the ring road and whatever a monarch counts as home. Ray said the shadow stayed behind a good while after, folding itself up neat, as if it were waiting to be asked.

So that's the story of the butterfly and its dark. Now, the kettle's on. Pass me that biscuit tin, the one with the robin on the lid.