Black and grey realism tattoo of a Buddha face with lotus flowers and a hand on the upper arm and shoulder of a person wearing a black vest top.

Buddha and lotus flowers on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder, showing a serene Buddha face framed by a hood or halo shape. Two lotus flowers rise from the lower arm, and a cupped hand holds a lotus bud beneath a faint sun and cloud shape. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft grey gradients on the face and strong contrast in the dark background.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Buddha Lotus Hand Sun Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, love, the 4.15 is always late and the kettle's still warm. You'll want this while you wait. It was the winter the crate came to Tallow Bridge, a long box with someone else's address on it and a smell of wet camphor. Nobody signed for it. Porter Arthur Mills hauled it into the parcels room on his shoulder, and when he prised the lid off there was a face inside, calm and carved, eyes half shut, looking at him as though he were the one who'd been waiting too long.

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Arthur left it three weeks. Each morning he found the lid lifted an inch, though he'd nailed it down himself. He told only the signalman, who said the wood was moving. So Arthur began leaving a cup of tea on the crate's corner, and by the end of the month the tea was always gone.

In March a girl came off the Manchester line with one suitcase and no ticket, asking after a statue her grandmother had described. She had a lotus seed in her palm, she said, grown in a tin bath. Arthur gave her the tea. Under the carved face they found wet newspaper, and inside it a single green bud, shut tight and still alive.

They planted it in the drinking trough on platform two. It opened in August, pink as a tram ticket, and the sun came up behind the water tower and lit it like a lamp. Arthur said the Buddha looked pleased. The girl said it looked tired, and they argued about it happily for forty years.