Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull, monarch butterfly and rose with a red wash behind, on the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull, rose and butterfly on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A realistic skull sits across the upper arm with a monarch butterfly resting on its crown and a shaded rose below the jaw. The skull and rose are rendered in black and grey with smooth gradients and fine detail, while a loose red brush-stroke background runs behind the design. The composition fills the upper arm and rises towards the shoulder, with the photograph taken straight on against a dark striped backdrop.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Skull Rose Butterfly Monarch butterfly

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The summer the Harrow sisters left Brackley Mill, nobody in the town thought they'd come back, least of all my mother, who kept the post office counter and knew every envelope that ever crossed it. I was nine and in charge of the bicycle pump. Ruth, the elder, had a tin of Woodbines and a red scarf she wore even in July, and it was she who found the skull in the bottom of the millpond when the water dropped that August. It was old, clean as a bleached bone, and she carried it up the lane under her arm like a loaf.

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She kept it on the windowsill of the room above the bakery, and I used to sit on the stairs and listen to her talk to it. She said its name was Mr Fenwick, after the schoolmaster who had boxed her ears in 1946. Her sister Jean painted roses on the back of the bakery's tea trays for pennies, and one morning she brought round a rose she'd drawn in pencil and asked Ruth to pin it under the skull's jaw. Ruth laughed so hard she dropped the Woodbines. A monarch came in through the open window that same afternoon and settled on the crown of Mr Fenwick, opening and closing its wings as if it had been invited.

We never did find out who the scarf had belonged to. Ruth went to London in the spring and Jean stayed on at the bakery, and the skull stayed on the sill. When I was grown and my own boy asked why the old bakery window had a red smear painted across the brick, I told him it was the colour of the afternoon the butterfly came in. He didn't believe me, and I didn't need him to.