Black ornamental crescent moon tattoo with patterned detailing on the lower back, above low-rise jeans and a white belt.

Ornamental crescent moon on lower back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black crescent moon sits on the side of the lower back, with its inner edge left open and its body filled with fine ornamental patterning. The bold outline contrasts with the delicate scrollwork inside, and the skin tone and clothing make the tattoo stand out clearly. The photo is a phone screenshot of a web page, with the tattoo framed in the centre against a black top and blue denim.

Blackwork Back Crescent moon Moon Ornamental pattern Scrollwork

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third time the tanker coughed on the climb past Dry Lake, I pulled onto the verge and let the headlights die, because Uncle Eli always said a dead engine has more to tell you than a live one. The desert went quiet the way it only does after sunset, with the tick of cooling metal and nothing else for miles.

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Eli's old lantern hung from the mirror bracket, a tin thing he had punched all over with a nail and a hammer, so the light came out in lace. When I lit it, the crescent he'd cut into the lid threw a curved bar of gold across the cab and down the dashboard. He called it his moon. He said a man driving at night needs one thing up there that tells him he is not lost, even when the road is.

I found the fault with a torch clamped in my teeth, lying under the cab where the fuel line dips. A coyote stopped at the edge of the light and watched me work, unbothered, its eyes green coins. Every so often I looked up at the real moon, a thin paring over the ridge, then back at the lantern's copy of it, and I could not have told you which one was throwing more light on my hands.

By the time the line was clamped and the engine caught, the sky had greyed at its edges. I drove with the lantern swinging on its hook, lace shadows sliding over the tar, and at the first petrol station I stopped for a coffee I didn't want. When I came back out, the sun was up over the flats and the lantern was still glowing on the mirror, pale and small, as if it had been waiting for me to remember it.