Lion and lotus flower design sketch

The sketch came back from the framer's this afternoon, still smelling of his turpentine, and I have been looking at it under the lamp since the last bus went past. Mr Okonkwo says the lion is mine now. I did it in the back room of the Eel Street shop while the rain ran down the glass, starting with the mane because it wouldn't settle, long strokes that kept tearing loose until they turned into blossom.

The lotus came next, two of them, one above the head and one below, and then the branches crawling down the left side of the sheet like something growing out of a crack in the pavement. I used the blue-purple biro because it was the only pen that didn't skip on the cream paper. Every cluster of flowers took me an hour, and by two in the morning my fingers had gone numb and the lion's face had gone soft around the eye, as if he were tired of being looked at.

He is turned away from the flowers, though. I only noticed that today. The petals drifting off his mane are going out past his nose towards the empty margin, and I never meant them to. Mr Okonkwo tapped the sheet and said that's where the client will want the ink to bleed, that the piece will need room to breathe.

I've pinned it above the sink. Come and see it before they send it off to the studio in Leeds. There is a petal on the floor under it that must have come off the paper when I rolled it, and I can't bring myself to sweep it up.

Love, Ruth