Black dotwork ink drawing of a chakra mandala with a crescent moon and lotus petals on beige paper.

Chakra mandala with crescent moon and lotus

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical mandala design with a vertical column of seven circular medallions, each containing a Sanskrit character, set over a crescent moon and layered lotus petals. The linework is fine and the shading is built from stippled dots, with solid black ink on the outer petals and tips. The drawing is in black ink only on a plain beige background, centred in the frame.

Dotwork Geometric Mandala Crescent moon Lotus Om symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, the crescent moon was still hanging over the pit heap when the day shift went down, thin as a paring, and Dad said it was the moon keeping its own counsel. I have stopped asking him what he means by things like that. He has not been himself since the roof came in at the Low Seam, and he sits by the range with his cap on his knee as if he is waiting for a bell that will not ring.

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The lamp-room board still has the brass tallies hung in a column, seven of them, each stamped with a man's number so the deputy knows who is below. Mrs Garbutt from number nine says they look like beads on a rosary, but I think of them as lamps set one above another down the dark. Coal dust gets into everything. It settles on the washing in fine speckles, like someone has flicked a pen over the sheets, and I spend Monday shaking them out before the wind can bring the whole street's soot back in.

Yesterday the frost came early and drew lotus petals across the scullery window, the sort you see on a Leeds tram window in January. I stood there with my hands in the basin and thought about how the pattern was made by cold, not by anybody's hand, and how it would be gone by noon. I have enclosed the seventh tally from the board. Dad says it is nothing, only a bit of metal, but I wanted you to have something from home that does not smell of smoke. Write when you can, and tell me whether the moon looks the same over the city.