Black and grey triple moon tattoo with a tree of life in the centre, shown on the upper back with a filigree design above a flash drawing of the same motif.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Triple moon with tree of life across the upper back

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The top panel shows a flash drawing of three crescent moons with filigree swirls and small stars, with the central moon left open. The lower photograph shows the same triple moon motif tattooed across the upper back or nape, with a shaded tree and roots filling the central circle. The work is black and grey, with fine swirled linework and soft shading on the skin.

Geometric Back Crescent moon Tree of life Root Star Filigree Swirl

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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

Third night of the waning moon and the lift to Ward Six has stuck again, so I've come down the back stairs with my torch and this notebook. Mr Abernethy in bed four asks every hour whether it's still dark. I tell him yes, and that the moon is doing its usual sums up over the car park.

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The old ash in the courtyard has roots that have lifted the tarmac into a ridge, and the porters have stopped trying to fill it in. Dinah from the kitchens says her gran called a tree like that a ledger, every ring a year somebody didn't die of something. I don't know about that. I do know the three windows on the east side make a row of crescents when the lights are off, and that Sister Okafor stands beneath them at the start of every shift with her palm flat on the glass, as if taking its temperature.

Tonight I counted stars between the moons, which is not a thing I've ever had time for. Seven over the car park, four above the chapel roof. At half three the lift dinged and the lights in Ward Six came up one bank at a time, like something stirring underground.

Mr Abernethy's daughter arrived at four with a flask. She stood by his bed and said the new moon was coming, and he said it always came back, that was the trick of it. I wrote that down because it's the best thing anyone has said on this ward all month, and because I'd like to remember it when the roots finally push up through the floor.