Back of a woman's neck and shoulders showing a colourful sugar skull moth tattoo on the neck and a large black and grey Japanese back piece with a pagoda, moon and geisha.

Sugar skull moth on neck with Japanese back piece

Japanese · Neck · Mixed · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a woman's head and upper body, with a red paisley bandana and a yellow backdrop. A colour sugar skull moth sits on the nape of the neck, with bold outlines and shaded wings, while a large black and grey back piece below shows a Japanese pagoda, a moon and geisha portraits. Floral tattoos in red and pink appear on the upper arms, and the composition is framed closely around the tattoos.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mei,

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The sugar skull moths have come back to the pier this week, the way they do every October when the stalls go up along the front, and I thought of you straight away. You always said they were the only honest creatures in Brighton, because they flew into the light knowing exactly what it would cost them.

Your cousin's wedding is on Saturday at the Hove registry office, and three separate aunts have informed me that I am to wear a proper suit and not the painter's overalls. I have the suit pressed. I have not told them that the paper lantern you sent from Osaka is still hanging in my window over the easel, the one with the pagoda and the punched-out moon, because I cannot take it down and I cannot bring myself to carry it through the town on a Saturday either.

My father used to say a lantern is only ever a cage that someone has decided to be kind about. He said it the summer he taught us to lay gold leaf on the shop sign, and he was wrong about most things, but I have never found a better way to hold the light than the way he taught me, with the breath held and the hand steady. I worked the pagoda's roof tiles by hand last winter, one at a time, because your grandmother would not have accepted a stencil.

I will go on Saturday. I will wear the suit and say the right things to the aunts. Tonight, when the moon comes up over the Downs, I will sit by the window with the lamp off and count how many moths find the paper before the candle goes out.

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