Black line drawing of a lotus flower, lace-style mesh panels and an om symbol, sketched as a fine line tattoo design on cream paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus and lace design with om symbol

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a open lotus flower at the centre, with a lattice of fine crosshatched lace panels curving out to either side and small dotted drops hanging below. An om symbol sits above the flower, drawn in bolder strokes than the rest of the design. The work is entirely black ink line on cream paper, with two black pens resting at the top right.

Fine line Botanical Lotus Om symbol Lace pattern Flower

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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

By ten to three the ward has settled into its one long note, the ventilation humming under everything like a held breath, and you only notice it when it stops. Tonight it stops. The lights in bay four dip, the monitors go quiet, and in the sudden dark you hear Mrs Pryce ask whether the sea has come in. You tell her it's only the power and that you'll have it back in a minute, then you go down the corridor with your torch in your teeth to find the switch.

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The fuse board is behind the linen store, where someone has hung a row of old lace curtains on a dead trolley. In the torchlight the lace throws its diamonds across the wall, and the drip chambers on the stands along the corridor hang like small clear beads, one beneath another. You follow the cable through them. You are thinking about the paper lotus Jasmine from the children's ward folded for her grandad last week, how it sat on his locker in a cup of water and kept its petals shut all night.

The switch is tripped, of course. You reset it with the heel of your hand and the ward comes back in a shudder, every machine clearing its throat at once. Mrs Pryce says the sea has gone out again. When you return to bay four the curtains are swaying in the warm air from the vent, and on the locker by the window the lotus has opened, pale and damp at the edges where the cup has overflowed, as though someone sat up in the dark and let it breathe.

You tug the lace straight, check the drip, and write the time in the book: 03:14, all well.