Fine line outlined stars in blue-grey ink on the back of a neck, seen from behind with short dark hair and a black sheer blouse.

Three outlined stars on the back of the neck

Fine line · Neck · Colour · Photo

A photograph taken from behind of a person with short, tousled dark hair, one hand raised to the hair. Three simple outlined stars in thin blue-grey linework descend vertically on the back of the neck, beneath the hairline. The background is softly blurred with warm daylight, and the black blouse with its sheer polka-dot panel sits below the tattoo.

Fine line Neck Star Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last season the Halloran Brothers pitched on the Shipley common, the big top had more patches than sky, and Dolores still insisted we paint the stars back on. She stood me on an upturned crate with a tin of blue-grey ink and a brush worn down to three bristles. Three stars, she said, down the strap of the sky, one below the other, the way Papa's trapeze had always dropped toward the net before he learned to trust the wire.

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Nobody came to the evening performances anymore. The Wonder Horse had gone lame in February and the fire-eater sold his pipes for coal. But every night at seven we still hauled the flap back, and the crowd that wasn't there could have seen the stars from the road if they'd looked. I told Dolores the council men would notice the paint. She said the council men had never once looked up.

On the third Thursday of October the rain came sideways off the Humber and tore the north panel clean away. We stood in the mud and watched the canvas bellow like a sail. Dolores didn't cry. She pressed her palm flat against my shoulder blade and said, quietly, that the stars were still on the piece that survived, and that was the piece that counted.

I kept that scrap in my coat for years. It sits now in a biscuit tin with the ticket stubs, three small blue stars gone pale at the edges, and when I can't sleep I trace them down my own neck the way she used to, one, two, three, until I reach the place where the light goes out.