Black and grey silhouette tattoo of an adult lifting a child against a circle, placed centrally on a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Silhouetted figure lifting a child on a back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo on the upper back shows a dark silhouette of an adult lifting a child overhead, set against a pale grey circle. The figures are solid black with stippled, dotted shading along the edges of the circle, and the work is entirely black and grey. The composition is centred on the spine, with the wearer's hair in a loose bun and a white open-back top framing the design.

Dotwork Back Silhouette Figure Child Circle Moon Sun

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry had been rolling since Holyhead, and Maud Garvey had given up trying to keep her tea in the cup. Her son Tomas, six and certain he was not seasick, pressed his nose to the salt-streaked window of the lounge. "It's coming," he said. "The moon's getting bitten."

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Outside, the deck lamps made a yellow box of the rain. Maud had promised him the eclipse since Easter, when the library leaflet showed a grey disc with a black one sliding across it. Now the cloud sat low over the swell, and the only moon she could find was a smear behind it. She took his hand and they pushed through the heavy door, past a steward swearing at a mop, onto the aft deck where the wind tore the words from her mouth.

He would not be satisfied with a smear. He pointed at the iron rail and said he could see it if he was higher. She thought of her own father lifting her onto the harbour wall at Dún Laoghaire, the gulls screaming below, and she did the same. She raised Tomas above her head, his arms flung out like a diver, his small shape cut black against the one thin patch of sky where the cloud had gone pale.

"Anything?" she called up. He was quiet a long while. Then he shouted that he could see it, a bite out of the light, and the cloud closed over again. She didn't tell him the sky had been empty for ten minutes. She held him there until his arms came down around her neck, and the ship swung toward the lights of Liverpool with the two of them still standing at the rail.