Upper back tattoo of three butterflies made from shaded footprints, with blue, pink and green washes and script names beneath.

Three footprint butterflies across upper back

Back · Mixed · Photo

Three butterfly designs are formed from grey shaded footprints across the upper back, each with a bodies made of a footprint pair and a dotted antennae line. Soft blue, pink and green washes sit behind the wings, and black script names are written beneath each butterfly. The photograph is taken from behind, centred on the shoulder blades, with the design filling most of the frame.

Back Footprint Butterfly Name Script Watercolour wash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By half past three the lights on Ward Six have gone the colour of weak tea, and you are the only one awake with a tray of ink pads, a stack of cardboard cards and a biro that keeps skipping. Irene from days has left a note on the desk: three babies in four hours, one still in the side room, and the parents would like prints before they go home.

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The first pair belongs to a boy called Teodor, born at ten past midnight, his feet so small you hold each one like a dropped petal while his mother watches with her hand pressed to her mouth. You press the soles to the ink, then to the card, lift them clean and write his name under the left heel. The second, a girl named Ivy, kicks against your thumb and you have to start again. By the time you reach the third, a set of twins whose father keeps apologising for the mess, you have learned to be quick and gentle at once.

It is the twins' father who notices the cards laid out on the desk, and who asks, shyly, whether you could fold them. So you do. You fold each print down its middle line, press the paper flat with the side of your hand, and open it again, and the two feet mirror each other with a faint smudge where the sole meets the arch. With a fine brush you draw a body down the crease and a pair of thin antennae curling off the top, and the footprints lift off the card as wings.

When Irene comes back at six she finds three butterflies drying on the sill, the ink still tacky, and she laughs quietly and says you have made work for her for life.