Black botanical tattoo of a lotus flower with swirling linework on the side of the ribs, shown on a person lying in a maroon bikini.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral tattoo on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A person lies on their side in a maroon bikini, with the torso and flank in focus. A large black floral design, built from a lotus-like bloom, curling vines and swirled linework, sits on the side of the ribs. The ink is solid black with fine grey shading, and the photo is taken in bright sunlight on a dark red mat.

Botanical Blackwork Ribs Lotus Flower Vine Swirl Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm sent me to the pond at first light because the mud had gone sour over the winter, and nobody else would wade in it. I was nineteen and new to the Hollin valley house, and I still counted my steps when I walked the cloister. The water came to my shins, cold enough to ache, and the silt pulled at my boots as if it wanted company.

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Under the broken reeds I found the old lotus roots, pale as candle wax and knotted together. Brother Anselm had told me they were older than the east wall, planted by a prior who never lived to see a flower open from them. I pulled the dead leaves loose one by one, and each unrolled from its stem with a sound like a page turning. Beneath them the new shoots were already pushing up, green and tight, curled like the first letter of a word.

By noon my hands were grey to the wrist. Brother Anselm came down with bread and stood on the stone edge, watching me work. He said nothing about the mud. He only asked whether I could see the bud yet. I said no. He said that was fine, the bud was not my business, the roots were. Then he climbed back up the path, and I stayed in the water until the bell rang for vespers.

In June the first bloom opened on the far side, white and wide as an open hand, and I was not there to see it. I had been sent down to the coast by then. Brother Anselm wrote to me once, enclosing a single pressed petal with the date written on the back in pencil and no other words at all.