Geometric radial mandala tattoo in blue and pink lines wrapping around an elbow, with a blurred green background.

Blue and pink geometric mandala on an elbow

Geometric · Other · Colour · Photo

A bent arm rests on a dark leather surface, showing a radial geometric design built from rounded diamond-shaped cells that spread outward from a central point near the elbow. The design uses clean, even linework in blue with magenta or pink inner outlines, and the cells are left as bare skin. The soft green background is out of focus, which keeps attention on the tattoo.

Geometric Other Mandala Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The lock at Hollin Weir has a new paddle gear, and Mr Auden says it will hold until the spring floods, which is what he said about the last one. I have been sitting on the coping every evening with your old drawing book, trying to work out why the iron plates on the sluice face look the way they do. Each plate is a rounded diamond, and they all radiate from the winding spindle in the middle, so when the wheel turns the whole face opens like a flower, the petals sliding under one another.

Father never drew it on paper. He chalked it onto the beam the summer before he went into the infirmary, and I thought he was only marking the rivets. Last Sunday I stood on the beam and counted the cells, forty-two in the first ring and thirty-six in the second, and realised the rings were not quite even. He had left one gap wider than the others, on the towpath side, where you and I used to drop pebbles to see who could make the most ripples.

Here is what I have not told Auden. When I lay my palm on the iron, the bare cells between the plates are warm from the sun, and the water showing through them turns blue, then pink wherever the light catches the weed. I think he wanted something you could read from the bank without anyone having to explain it. I have decided to leave the gap open.

Come home before the flood. Bring the good chalk.

Nell