Black ink tattoo of a flourished letterform with scrollwork and a lotus flower on the inside of a wrist.

Flourished letterform and lotus on a wrist

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tattoo sits on the inner wrist, showing a large stylised letterform with a teardrop-shaped top and a looping lower stroke. A lotus flower with pointed petals and curling tendrils extends from the right side of the letterform. The linework is bold and filled, with no shading or colour, and the design is centred on a pale background of skin.

Lettering Botanical Other Lotus Flourish Swirl Scrollwork Script

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Rain comes through the broken chancel roof onto your desk, so you work with one hand cupped over the ink pot and the other steadying the vellum. The capital has to be a long S, the kind that drops below the line and curls back on itself like a river finding its bed. You have drawn it four times this week. Each time the loop runs out of room and the tail sinks into the blot at the foot of the page.

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The lord of the place wants his name in gold on the charter before the bailiffs come up the valley. He does not care that half the curtain wall has slid into the moat. He cares that the lotus in the margin is right, because his mother brought the flower back from Acre in a clay pot and it died the first winter. You painted it anyway, petals pointed like a flame, and he tapped it with his riding crop and asked whether it could be made to look alive.

So you climb to the solar at dusk, where the north wall still holds the last of the light. Thin tendrils of gold leaf curl out from the letter, fine as hair, and you lay them down one at a time with your breath held. The wind keeps trying to lift the leaf. Below, the bailiffs' horses stamp at the gate and somebody is shouting for the steward.

When the charter is sealed, the lord reads it by candle and says nothing for a long while. Then he turns the parchment towards the flame and you see him smile at the tail of the S, which has wandered down past the margin toward the wet stones. Leave it, he says. Let it find its own way out. By morning the rain has washed the walls clean, and the letter is the only thing in the valley still holding its shape.