Close-up of a thigh tattoo of a mint-filled puzzle piece with black branches, leaves, pink blossom and flying butterflies.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Puzzle piece with branches and butterflies on a thigh

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A puzzle piece outline filled with pale turquoise sits at the centre, with a black branching tree growing out of it and small pink blossoms among the leaves. Black silhouetted butterflies drift off to the left, and the bold black outlines and flat fills give it a graphic, illustrative look. The tattoo is shown on the outer thigh, with denim visible at the top edge of the frame.

Upper arm Puzzle piece Leaves Blossom Butterfly

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last piece of the jigsaw had been missing since Easter, and nobody in our house would admit to losing it. The picture was a woodland path, the sort you only get on a biscuit tin, and we had built the rest on the dining table over six wet weeks. Gran sat at the end nearest the window with her tea going cold. Dad kept sliding the box lid across the table as if the answer might be printed on it.

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I found the piece on a Sunday, wedged behind the pipes under the radiator in the back bedroom. It was shaped like a fish that had grown a knob for a head, and it was furred with dust and slightly bent. Someone had drawn on the back in biro: a branch, three leaves, and a wobbly line of birds, or maybe butterflies. The writing was Gran's, the small looped kind she used for shopping lists.

I carried it down the stairs in my fist like a sweet. Gran took it without looking up, turned it the right way, and pressed it into the gap. It clicked as neatly as a latch. Then she tapped the blue sky where a thin tree had started to climb out of the water, its pink blossom just catching the light.

"Your grandfather drew that when he was courting me," she said. "He said every gap wants something growing in it." Dad laughed, and Tom asked what the butterflies were for, and she shrugged and said they were for leaving. We never did finish the sky. Gran said that was the point, and the rest could grow in its own time.