Close photograph of a purple butterfly tattoo with black outlined wings and a purple ribbon running through its body, on the lower back.

Purple butterfly and ribbon on the back

Back · Colour · Photo

A purple butterfly with black outlined wings and small dot details sits at the centre of the frame, with a purple ribbon forming its body and a curled antenna at the top. The wings are shaded in several tones of purple, with soft gradients and lighter highlights. The tattoo sits on pale skin with a towel and smudged purple ink at the lower right edge of the frame.

Back Butterfly Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad's ghost train was called the Silver Moth, though nobody had seen a moth on it since the seventies. I was twelve the summer the ride stopped turning, and I spent my mornings on the caravan step with a tin of purple enamel, touching up the carousel horses because Mum said a fair without colour was just a car park with lights.

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Mrs Okonedo ran the candyfloss van two pitches down. She had a length of lavender silk knotted round the handle of her sugar drum, and when I asked about it she said it was for Teddy, who sold goldfish in plastic bags on that same field every August until the year he didn't come back. She gave me a paper cone of pink floss and said a moth with a ribbon for a body would fly through any storm to find the lamp it liked.

That October I painted the entrance board for the Moth myself. Dad's old black outline was still good, so I kept it, and I filled the wings in three tones of purple with a dab of white where the lamps would catch them. I dotted the edges the way Dad had done the lettering, one small circle at each point. Mum stood at the bottom of the ladder and said nothing for a long time.

In April the fair came back to the village green. The lever was stiff, but Dad pulled it, and the old wheels began to turn. The board glowed above the doorway, and the first car rolled into the dark.