Colourful butterfly wings tattoo spanning the upper back, with black outlines, stained glass style panels and filigree tendrils.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Stained glass butterfly wings across back

Neo-trad · Back · Colour · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing a large butterfly wing tattoo spanning her upper back. The wings have segmented panels in orange, yellow, green and red, edged with heavy black outlines and ornate curling tendrils. Smaller coloured tattoos are visible on her upper arms against a plain dark background.

Neo-trad Back Upper arm Butterfly Wing Filigree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mags, the big top came down in Carlisle on Tuesday, and the wagon with the wings went into the damp barn at Hexham where the rain gets through the roof. You asked me to write properly, so here it is, and don't wave it off as drink talk.

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The wings were Tomasz's last piece. He cut the panels from old church glass he bought off a salvage yard in Leeds, the ruby and the amber and the bottle green, and he leaded every one by hand. The tendrils he drew freehand, curling off the frame like frost on a pane, and he swore they were the only honest thing in the whole show. When the lamp caught them from behind, the audience went quiet every night, even the lads at the back who came for the knife act.

Then the council wanted the field, and the bank wanted the lorries, and Oskar stopped paying the feed bill. Last week he sat on the steps with the wings across his knees, picking at a lead seam with a bradawl, and said the glass had outlived three cathedrals and would outlive us. I think he was trying to make himself feel better.

Tonight I stood at the open barn door with the lamp behind me and watched the segments throw orange and green across the straw. It looked like something that had been waiting in there to be let out. I packed the panels in tissue, one by one, and I did not cry, though I wanted to. Write back soon, and tell me where you're sleeping.