Black and grey butterfly tattoos on the upper back and shoulder blade of a woman with her hand raised to her head.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two butterflies on an upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind with her hair falling loose and one hand raised to her head. Two butterflies are tattooed on the upper back, a larger one near the shoulder blade and a smaller one below it, with dark outlines and shaded wing patterns. The plain pale background and soft lighting keep the focus on the tattoos.

Back Shoulder Butterfly Wing Hair Upper back

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The release was supposed to happen at half past three, when the sun cleared the yew hedge and the florist promised the crate would be cool enough to open. You stand by the garden gate holding the card Marguerite wrote in careful capitals: OPEN SLOWLY, THEY ARE SLEEPY. Behind you the string quartet tunes badly, and somebody's uncle is laughing too loudly about a boat he once sank off Mull.

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The lid lifts with a soft tick. Inside, the butterflies cling to the cardboard in a clump, black-veined wings folded shut like dried leaves. You have handled a hundred small disasters for this wedding already: the seating plan that reshuffled itself, the cake knife that went missing, the vicar's reading glasses found later in a cheese dish. None of those had a pulse. You tip the box towards the hedge and wait, because Marguerite said that if too many leave at once, none of them will go anywhere but the grass.

One doesn't leave. It climbs onto the back of your hand and walks up to your knuckle, opening and closing its wings so slowly the dark edges look painted on the air. You think of Marguerite's grandmother, who kept a tin of pressed wings from every summer of her marriage, and how she used to say you could tell a good year by the colour of the dust.

The quartet stops, then starts again in the right key. You lower your hand. The butterfly lifts, circles the cake table once, and settles on a sprig of white hydrangea beside the bride's chair. Nobody else notices. Marguerite is laughing at something her husband said, and the card in your pocket has gone soft from being held, so you fold it and leave it there.