Black tribal-style butterfly tattoo design with sweeping wing curves and a slender body, drawn on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal butterfly design

Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical butterfly design with thick black tribal-style linework forming the wings, inner wing curves and a narrow body with antennae at the top. The design is drawn in solid black on white with no shading, so the shapes rely on the bold outline and negative space. The composition is centred and fills most of the frame.

Butterfly Tribal

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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

Dear Tomasz,

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The last tram came into the depot at ten past two and I was still under it with a torch in my teeth, trying to find why the bell kept ringing on its own. Mr Okafor says it is the wind getting into the cable housing. I say it is the ghost of the Corporation's first driver, who never forgave them for the Rochdale line. You will laugh, but the bell only rings when the moths are out under the lamps on Oldham Road.

There is one that has been coming to the depot doors for a week now. It is pale as milk and its wings are cut like the iron grilles on the old tram shelters, black lines bent into points, with a narrow body and two feelers that look like the aerial on Mrs Patel's radio. On Tuesday I left the shutter up for it and it sat on the bell-pull for an hour, opening and closing, as if it were counting the strokes.

I have decided it is yours. You always said the thing you missed at sea was a dark that had edges. Here the dark has edges too: the kerbs, the gasworks, the long brick wall with the faded soap advert still showing through. I thought you should know that something keeps watch on the depot for you, and that the bell only rings for it.

Write back. Tell me the sea is not as flat as the photograph you sent.

Your sister, Halina