Fine line black tattoo of eight moon phases running vertically down the centre of a person's back, along the spine.

Moon phases down the spine

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A column of eight circles runs down the centre of the back, each showing a different moon phase from full at the top to new at the bottom. The outlines are thin and even, and the shadowed portions are solid black fill with no grey shading. The sepia-toned photograph is taken from behind with a dark background, which keeps the focus on the spine.

Fine line Back Moon Moon phase Circle Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ewes were lambing early that winter, and Agnes Holm kept the lantern burning in the far barn past midnight, because the frost had come down hard enough to crack the water trough and the moon had gone thin over the top field. Her father had always said the moon was a round cheese the sky nibbled at, a slice each night, until nothing was left but a rind and the stars came out to laugh at it.

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Her father also said that a shepherd who counted the nights could call the moon back. So Agnes took a stub of charcoal from the hearth and drew on the gatepost by the lane: a full circle at the top, then the waning shapes beneath, one for each night, down to a plain black ring at the bottom where the sky had eaten everything. She pressed her thumb to each one as she passed, the way you touch a sleeping dog to make sure it still breathes.

Near dawn the ewe in the end pen turned onto her side and began to push. Agnes knelt in the straw with her sleeves rolled, talking low to the animal, and when a wet, bleating lamb came out into the lantern light she laughed aloud. Through the slats of the barn door the sky was clearing, and low over the hedge hung a sliver of pale light, no thicker than a fingernail.

She walked out to the gatepost with the lamb wrapped in her shawl. The black ring at the bottom of the column looked less like an ending now, more like a bowl waiting to be filled. She rubbed the charcoal from her thumb onto the wood and went in to put the kettle on, counting, as she went, the nights left before the moon came round full again.