Black and grey realism style tattoo of five moon phases running down a person's back, from a crescent at the top to a shaded full moon in the middle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moon phases down the spine

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Five moon phases are stacked vertically down the centre of a back, from a thin crescent at the top through partial phases to a shaded full moon in the middle and a crescent at the bottom. The full moon has textured grey shading that gives it depth, while the crescents are mostly solid black with softer grey edges. The photo is taken from behind against a dark green background, with a pink top pulled down over one shoulder and painted hands visible near the neck.

Realism Back Moon Moon phase Crescent moon Full moon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide has been wrong since Tuesday, and your father says so every time he comes up the slipway with the day's catch. You sit on the lock-keeper's step with the chalk tin beside you and copy the moons from the almanac onto the board nailed to the wall of the harbour office. Five pale circles in a column, the way he taught you, each one a night when the boats had to be in before the bar turned.

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Harbour towns keep their own calendars. Yours runs on the gulls leaving the breakwater, the smell of diesel when the wind is off the land, and the Mary Ellen, who has been late back from the Dogger grounds for three weeks while her skipper's wife comes down each evening to stare at the water. You rub out the thin crescent at the top with your thumb, because that night is done, and the full moon in the middle is already sitting over the church spire like someone holding up a lamp.

On the night the full moon clears the spire, the Mary Ellen's lights come round the point at half past one. You hear her engine before anyone else does, and you are already on the quay with the torch when she noses into the berth. Her skipper steps off looking older than he did in May. He catches the rope you throw and says nothing about the bar or the weather, only that the water was kind in the end.

Back in the office you take up the chalk and draw the last crescent at the bottom of the board, the thinnest curve you can manage, and you do not rub it out.