Black and grey tattoo of a moth beside a crescent moon on a person's chest, partly visible between the open edges of a light denim shirt.

Moth and crescent moon on the chest

Chest · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a moth with detailed, wing-like patterning and a crescent moon above it, both rendered in black and grey. Fine shading and darker outlines define the moth's wings, and the crescent moon has softer grey tones. The photograph is taken close up, with the shirt edges framing the tattoo and a hand resting at the lower left.

Chest Moth Crescent moon Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Cyril, the sheet is still pinned to the back wall of Mr Hallam's chemist's yard, where the bulb burns all night for the moths, and this morning there was one I have never seen in Tadcaster before. Its wings were patterned like the lace on Mother's good tablecloth, grey on grey, with a dark band that looked as if someone had pressed a thumb into the dust. It sat on the sheet through the whole milk round and would not be coaxed onto a jam jar lid.

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Mr Hallam says a moth that sits still all day is a sign of rain, and he may be right, because the sky over the gasworks was the colour of wet slate. But when I walked to the bus stop the crescent moon was still showing above the chimney, thin and pale as a fingernail paring. I told him the moths steer by it the way the trawlers steer by the lighthouse, and he only laughed and told me to stop filling my head with Mother's almanacs.

I fetched the stepladder and carried the jar up in both hands. When I tipped it, the moth did not fall. It opened its wings slowly, as if it had been waiting for permission, and climbed the brick wall towards the roof. Mr Hallam switched off the bulb, and still it went up. I lost it against the white of the sky, where the moon hung like a hook, and for a moment I could not tell which of them was which.

I have left the jar on my windowsill with the lid off. Come home at Easter and bring the good scissors, and we will cut a paper moon for the lamp and see what comes to it. Your loving sister, Dora.