Close-up of a tiny solid black star tattoo on the upper back near the shoulder, with a grey top off the shoulder and loose hair above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small star tattoo on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small, solid black star sits on the skin of the upper back, near the shoulder and neck. The star is filled in with dense black ink and has crisp edges, with no shading or colour. The warm, low-light photo shows the tattoo against tanned skin, with a grey top pulled off the shoulder and blurred hair at the top of the frame.

Back Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz, the big top came down in Gloucester on Tuesday and the lions went to a farm near Ledbury in a borrowed lorry. I am writing this on the back of an old handbill that still promises Seven Wonders of the World, though we have four now, and one of them is a goat that can count to six.

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You will remember the flyers' shoulders. Every one of them had the same black star, pricked in by old Mirek in the back room of his shop in Bristol, so the catcher could find them in the air when the lamps dimmed. Mama had one too, and when she was tired she would lie on the caravan floor and tell me a star is only a hole the night has forgiven. I never knew if that was true or just the sort of thing a trapeze woman says over tea.

The net was sold in March. Papa said the insurers would not sign for it, and Vesna, who flew for twenty years, said she would rather fall honestly than be paid to be caught. So on the last night she climbed without it, and I stood in the ring with a torch, my thumb on the switch, while forty people in the cheap seats pretended not to breathe.

She came down into the dark, and the spot found her shoulder, the black star sharp as a stamp on warm skin. Nobody moved. Then the goat started stamping its hooves on the boards, and that was the end of Halloran's Circus. Write back soon, and tell me Warsaw is not as grey as they say.