Colour tattoo of three orange monarch butterflies with black outlines and veining across a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three monarch butterflies on upper back

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Three monarch butterflies in flight are tattooed across the upper back, each with bold black outlines and black vein detail on orange wings. The largest butterfly sits lower and to the right, with two smaller ones rising diagonally above and to the left. The shading is soft, with lighter orange highlights on the wings against warm skin, and the composition is framed by the neck and shoulders.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The milkweed by the shed has finally gone to seed, and Mum was right about the monarchs after all. I counted three caterpillars on Tuesday, striped like a deckchair, and by Thursday two had hung themselves upside down from the gutter and gone green and gold, as if someone had dropped a jewel and it had stuck. The third took its time. I nearly gave up on it, then this morning it had split its case and was drying its wings on the rail, orange as a pub sign at dusk.

They did not stay. Mum says they never stay, not really. They only pass through on their way somewhere warmer and they don't ask you to understand the route. The first went off over the hedge before I had the kettle on. The second sat on the washing line for a full minute, opening and closing its wings as though it was reading something, then rose up past the apple tree and was gone. I stood there with a tea towel in my hand, feeling oddly like I'd been left a message I couldn't read.

The last one is still here, on the buddleia, and I've decided not to rush it. Dad's old wooden chair is out in the sun, and I've been sitting with my back against the warm fence, watching it open and close. Tell me when you're coming down. I'd like you to see it before it goes south.

Love, Jo

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