Close-up photo of a colour tattoo of a monarch-style butterfly with black wings and pink shading, layered over a pink ribbon shape, on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Monarch butterfly over a pink ribbon

Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a monarch-style butterfly with black wing edges, white spots and pink wing panels, viewed from above. A pink ribbon loop sits behind the body and wings, with its tails extending downwards. The linework is bold and dark, and the pink areas are shaded to create some depth.

Butterfly Monarch butterfly Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The snow has shut the lane since Tuesday, so the Crown has only the four of us and the bread I made this morning. You will not believe what Tom found in the glasshouse at dawn: a monarch, wings closed like a folded letter, clinging to the cold rim of the rhubarb pot. I told him it was dead. He said it was only thinking. We have it now on the windowsill of Room Four, where the radiator ticks, and it has opened its wings twice since breakfast, black edges and those white freckles, as if someone had flicked salt across ink.

A woman stayed in Room Four in October and left a pink ribbon pinned inside the guestbook, the sort they hand out at the church fair, its tails hanging out of the page like a bookmark that wanted to be found. I didn't think much of it until Tom laid the butterfly beside it on the sill and the two matched, the pink of one soaking into the pink of the other. He asked whether the lady would want it back. I said she had left it for somebody to keep.

Tomorrow the plough is due, if the sky lets it. I mean to open the top door, let the cold in and see whether the thing can fly. If it can, Tom will carry it to the hedge. If not, I'll write her a line and tell her the guestbook had a visitor.

Love, Margaret