Small black and grey tattoo of three butterflies on the inner wrist and forearm, shown in a close phone photo.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three butterflies on the wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three small butterflies in black ink sit on the inner wrist, with one slightly higher and two lower, arranged in a loose diagonal. The wings show dark solid areas with lighter grey shading and fine detail along the veins and edges. The ink is black and grey only, set against pale skin, and the photo is taken straight on with the hand angled upward.

Forearm Butterfly Wrist

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hay had been in the barn since August, and nobody at Coldharbour Farm expected anything to stir in it in January. But on the morning the snow stopped, Ada Pike heard a tapping at the shutter and found three butterflies on the inside of the glass, dark-winged and slow, as though they had been waiting for her to wake.

Keep reading

Her father laughed and said they were only moths that had got fancy. Ada did not think so. When she opened the door they went out past her into the yard and hung in the cold air above the water trough, one higher than the other two, and then they went down the lane toward the far field where the ewes were kept. She followed in her wellingtons, the crust breaking under her with every step.

At the stone wall they stopped. The first settled on the gatepost, the second on the rail of the hurdle, and the third on Ada's own sleeve, light as a dropped leaf. Beyond the wall, in a drift up to the ewe's back, a grey ewe lay on her side, and the lamb was already halfway out. Ada knelt in the snow and worked it free with cold hands, and when she looked up the three butterflies had gone.

Her father found her in the field at dusk with a lamb inside her coat and the ewe licking its face. He asked where she had been, and she said the butterflies had shown her the way. He looked at the gatepost, where a little dust of black scales still lay, and said nothing, which was his way of agreeing. Every January after, the hay was carried out of that barn by hand and shaken over the snow, so the butterflies could leave.