Colour back tattoo of a pink lotus between blue crescent moons with dangling beads, seen on a woman facing away from the camera, with grey arm tattoos visible.

Lotus and crescent moons on a back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A woman seen from behind shows a large back tattoo of a pink lotus flower set between two blue crescent moons, with fine dangling beads or drops below. The linework is delicate and the petals are softly shaded in pink and blue, with a fine thin chain or spine motif running up towards the neck. Her arms carry grey tattoos, including a sleeve of botanical and ornamental designs, against a patterned wall hanging and a purple bed cover.

Botanical Back Upper arm Forearm Lotus Crescent moon Bead Floral Lettering Sleeve Woman

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are sixteen and tired of the reed beds at Memphis, where your uncle sends you before dawn to cut papyrus with a bronze blade that nicks your thumb every morning. The water stays grey until the sun clears the eastern hills, and then the lotus begin to open along the shallows, pink as the inside of a shell, one after another, as if someone were lighting lamps.

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Your uncle, a boatwright, has been commissioned for a funerary barque with two crescent prows, one silver, one glazed the blue of a kingfisher's back. The foreman wants a lotus set between them that will open on the river like a promise. Your uncle says you have the steadiest hands in the yard. He gives you a bowl of blue frit and a cord of glass beads that clatter softly when you walk, and tells you the moon sails through the underworld while the lotus waits for it to come back.

The lotus you need must be cut at dusk, when it folds itself shut. You wade past the last stake, where the mud pulls at your shins, and find a bud still closed tight. You hold it against the crescent you have carried all afternoon. It is cool and heavier than it looks, and when you lift it the beads on your cord swing and tap your collarbone. You understand the bargain now: the flower and the moon are never in the same sky together, so one of them is always waiting for the other.

At the quay the barque is launched, the lotus seated in its socket between the two blue horns, and the last light catches the glaze and makes it look wet. Your uncle asks if you will come back to the reeds tomorrow. You say yes, but you already know you will go out at dusk again to watch a bud close, because the river keeps its promises slowly and you have decided to be patient with it.