Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a cratered full moon on a shoulder, with the words LA LUNA in small capitals above it.

Moon with La Luna text on shoulder

Dotwork · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A full moon is drawn in a circle with its surface detail built up from dense dots and fine stippling, giving the craters and maria a textured, shaded look. Small capital letters reading LA LUNA sit above the circle on the skin. The tattoo is in black and grey ink and fills most of the frame, with the shoulder and upper chest visible around it.

Dotwork Shoulder Moon Crater Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The generator coughs twice before the Moon Wheel lights catch, and you are the one holding the torch because your father's hands shake in the cold. Mr Okonedo says the moon over the candy stall is the wrong colour tonight, too yellow, and wants you to dot the craters back onto the painted board before the second house. You climb the ladder with a tin of grey ink and a rag stuffed in your back pocket.

Keep reading

The board is a full moon as wide as a cartwheel, and the children have rubbed its seas grey with sticky fingers. You work by stippling, one dot after another, because Mrs Pell once told you a crater is only a shadow that has agreed to stay put. Below you the fair hums along: the waltzer grinding, a man selling brandy in paper cups, the calliope wheezing through "Daisy Bell" a half-beat behind itself.

A girl in a red coat stops at the foot of the ladder and reads the words painted above the moon, LA LUNA, and asks what they mean. You tell her it is Spanish for the moon. She asks if you can make it talk. You say the moon only talks to people who stay up past the last ride, and she says she intends to stay up forever.

When the lights dim at midnight you climb down with grey to your wrists and find the girl's mother has bought the last toffee apple and pressed it into your hand. You look up. Your painted moon hangs over the stall, a shade too bright, and the real one has slid behind the big top, exactly where you left it.