Black and grey dotwork tattoo of balance scales with a geometric diamond and leaf motif on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Balance scales with geometric diamond on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo of a pair of balance scales hangs from a central geometric diamond containing a stylised leaf, with a small sunburst above and a solid triangle below. The pans hold stippled shapes and the ends of the beam finish in circles, all drawn in fine dotwork and thin linework. The tattoo is shown in black and grey on bare skin, centred in the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Back Scale Diamond Leaf Sunburst Triangle Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm kept the weights in a cedar box with a brass lock, and every Thursday I carried them down the cloister to the almonry where the scales stood on a bench under the window. The pans were bronze and dented from a century of hands. I was given the task the winter the old cellarer's eyes clouded, and I took it as a punishment, because I had come to the abbey believing I had left my quarrels outside the gate.

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The trouble came in April, when the abbot sent word that the village would be fed from our stores through the lean months. Sister Hild brought in the sacks of dried pease and I weighed each one, calling the figure aloud so the lay scribe could write it in the ledger. Pease in one pan, a lump of salt-cured mutton in the other, and the beam would not settle. I added and took away until my fingers were grey with dust, and still the round ends of the beam rocked like two moons that could not agree on the hour. Above it all the little sunburst I had carved into the lintel seemed to mock me.

On the last evening I sat alone with the scales and stopped counting. I put the pease in the left pan and nothing at all in the right, and I waited. The beam came level. The diamond above it held the room steady the way a good wall does. I saw then that the almonry had never asked me to be exact, only to say plainly what could not be measured. I wrote the sum in the ledger in my own hand and left a blank beside it, then went to ring for vespers with the beam still level in my mind.