Black and grey moth tattoo with shaded wings on the upper back, just below the base of the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Moth tattoo on upper back

Traditional · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large moth with outstretched wings is tattooed across the upper back, centred below the nape of the neck. The wings have bold dark outlines, cream-toned highlights and soft grey shading, while the body is rendered in solid black with fine detail. The photo is taken from behind, so only the back of the head and a grey t-shirt are visible around the design.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp above Gate Four has been drawing moths for three weeks, and by half past two they lie in the gutter like dropped ash. You notice the big hawk moth on the glass of the booth, wings flat as a pressed letter, and you tell yourself it is only a moth. The driver of the lorry from Ostend has been waiting twenty minutes with his papers folded in his teeth.

Keep reading

Inside the papers, a manifest says cotton thread, forty crates, bound for Lyon. The seal is wrong. Not forged, just tired, the wax lifted at one corner as if something had tried to breathe underneath. You open the first crate with the knife that belongs to the night shift and find bolts of dark grey silk, each one wound around a single cocoon the size of a thumb. Nobody else would look twice. You look twice.

The moth lifts from the glass as you lower the lid, and it takes a slow circuit of the lamp, its pale bands catching the light like the stripes on a platform edge. It settles on the cuff of your sleeve. You ask the driver whether he has ever seen a moth that size in January. He says no, and it occurs to you that he is afraid of it, and that you are not.

At dawn you stamp the manifest GOOD TO PASS and write the cocoons down as silk. When the lorry pulls away, you find the moth on the inside of the booth window, wings open, waiting for the next lamp. Keep the knife. Keep the stamp. Something in that grey silk is still moving, and it knows the way across.

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