Watercolour-style butterflies in red, orange and magenta trail down the upper back from the shoulder blade of a woman in a dark top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Watercolour butterflies across a shoulder blade

Back · Colour · Photo

A cluster of butterflies in red, orange and pink runs diagonally down from the shoulder blade towards the centre of the back. The wings have soft, blended edges with no outlines, giving a loose watercolour look, and the smallest butterflies fade into darker magenta toward the bottom. The background is plain pale wall, with a dark navy top and the top of the head cropped out of frame.

Back Butterfly

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The ovens are the only thing in Cobb Street that wake before me now, so I've taken to writing on the back of flour sacks while the first trays prove. Mr Ashdown says a letter is just a loaf you can't eat, which is typical of him, but I'm sending this one anyway.

Here is what I've been doing since you left. Every Thursday I sit at the end of the bench with a saucer of cochineal, a jar of apricot water and a brush with three hairs left in it, and I paint sugar butterflies for the wedding cakes. Mrs Okafor wanted them to climb the tiers as if they were following the sun. So the big ones at the top are the red of a fire lit too early, the middle ones go orange, and by the time you reach the bottom they've faded to a plum-coloured magenta, the colour of the sky over the bins at half four when the lamps are still on.

Yesterday one broke off in the box and I kept it. It is the smallest of the lot, no bigger than a fingernail, and I've stuck it to the inside of the window with a dab of gum arabic. When the first van pulls up outside, the sun catches it and it looks, for about a minute, as if it might lift off and go after the milk float.

Come home when your ship docks. I'll save you the end of the morning's rye.

Your sister, Nell