Realistic hawk moth tattoo in grey shading with blue-tinted wings across the back of a hand, with a faded moth above the wrist.

Realistic hawk moth tattoo across the back of a hand

Realism · Hand · Mixed · Photo

A large hawk moth is tattooed across the back of a hand, with its wings spreading over the knuckles and fingers. The moth is rendered in fine, detailed shading with dark greys, white highlights and blue tones along the wing edges, and a dark smudged background fades out around the wings. A second, paler moth sits at the top of the wrist, and the hand rests on a dark leather surface with red painted nails.

Realism Hand Moth Insect Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dessie Marr had the night shift at Holloway Court, fourteen floors of damp corridors and a boiler that knocked like someone wanting in. At half two he found the moth pressed flat against the glass of the lobby door. Its wings were the colour of wet slate, and the pattern on its back looked like a pale grinning face. His mother had called those corpse moths and swept them out with the dustpan, so he kept his distance and tried to shoo it with the clipboard.

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It didn't fly. It stepped onto the back of his hand instead, light as fluff, and rode there while he climbed the stairs to check the bins on each landing. On seven, Mrs Adeyemi's door stood open a crack, the way it always did when she couldn't sleep, and a radio murmured something about shipping forecasts. Dessie stopped and let the moth settle. Its wings opened slowly, and the blue along their edges caught the emergency lights like the inside of a mussel shell.

On the roof the wind was up and the lifts had been out of order since March. He held his hand over the parapet. The moth stayed, turning its head toward the lit windows below, a thousand small lamps of people who were awake for their own reasons. Dessie waited longer than he needed to, because nobody was timing him and nobody would ask why.

When it finally lifted, it didn't drop toward the car park. It rose up into the orange sky over the estate, getting smaller until he couldn't tell it from the flicker of a television aerial. He stood there until the cold found the gap in his sleeves, then went back down the stairs and left the clipboard on the landing wall.