Small red and blue butterfly tattoo on the ankle, with shaded pink wings, blue edges and thin red antennae.

Red and blue butterfly on an ankle

Ankle · Colour · Photo

A small butterfly in profile, with pink-red wings edged and spotted in dark blue and light blue, and two long red antennae. The wings have soft shading and gradients, with a few light highlights along the blue outlines. The design sits alone on pale skin against a dark blue background.

Ankle Butterfly Wing Antennae

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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The rain has not let up since Tuesday, so the market on Fenner Street has turned to slurry and the stallholders have stopped pretending otherwise. I still have the last of the box of cheap enamel brooches Mrs Okafor left me when she moved to Leeds. Most of them are dull. But on Thursday a boy of about nine came under the awning with his mother and asked whether the red one with the blue spots was a real butterfly, pinned in a case somewhere. I said it was painted. He didn't believe me, so I held it up to the lamp so he could watch the light go through the wings.

I thought about you after he left. You were the one who caught the swallowtail in the bean field when we were small and said it was too beautiful to keep. You let it go, then cried for an hour because it had landed on your sleeve first. Dad called it daft. I think it was the only sensible thing either of us did that summer.

I've kept the brooch back for you. One wing has chipped where the blue meets the red, but the antennae still curl out long and thin as wire, the way you liked them. Come and collect it before the market packs up for winter. Bring your own umbrella this time. The one you left in my van has gone to a stranger who needed it more.

Love, Ruth