Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a row of seven moon phases across a person's upper back, shown in a black and white photograph.

Moon phases row on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a row of seven moon phases, from thin crescents on the left to fully filled discs in the centre and back to crescents on the right, running across the upper back. The circles are built from stippled dots and soft gradients, with crisp black edges on the crescents. The image is black and white, and the subject lies face down with the tattoo framed by a bra strap and a head of hair in the foreground.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Jean,

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Don't laugh at me, but I've started sowing by the moon again. Bert kept a chart on the back of the shed door for forty years, seven phases pencilled in a little row, from new to full and back again. I scrubbed it off after the funeral because I couldn't bear the look of it. Last week I found the pencil stub in the tin with the string and the bent nails, and I sat on the step and drew them out again on the back of an electricity bill.

The beans go in on the waxing side, he always said, when the light is climbing. Root crops wait for the waning, when everything is pulling down into the dark. I thought it was nonsense when we were courting. Now I've got lettuces under the cloche, leeks in the bed by the water butt, and a row of sweet peas I'm not sure he'd have trusted with a bit of rain.

Here's the odd thing. The moon has been a thin paring for three nights, and the ground still smells of him, wet leaf and tin. Mr Okafor at the next plot caught me on Tuesday, crying over a cabbage. He didn't ask. He just handed me the hoe and said the carrots wanted thinning before the dark came on.

So I've thinned them. Tonight is the first night I can see the moon from the step, a sliver going the wrong way, and I'm telling myself that's all right. Bert always said you sow in the dark and trust the light to come back. Come up at the weekend and bring your secateurs. There's a row of crescents on the shed door that want redrawing, and I can't reach the top one. Love, Margaret

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