Forearm design of an Om symbol above a lotus flower, with a swirling stem running down to the wrist, in dark brown-black ink.

Lotus and Om symbol on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the inner forearm showing an Om symbol at the top, a lotus flower in the centre and a curling stem that descends toward the wrist. The linework is bold and even, with the petals lightly shaded in a warmer brown. The design is centred on the arm against plain skin, with a striped top and denim shorts visible at the edge of the frame.

Botanical Forearm Lotus Om symbol Swirl Vine Flower

Find an artist for this

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

Sit yourself down, the kettle can wait a minute. You want the one about the flower in the car park? Mrs Abernethy on the eleventh floor swore to it, and she never told a lie that didn't have sugar in it.

Keep reading

It came up through the drain grate by the bins the summer the lifts broke for good. Nobody planted it. First a green stalk, then a curl at the top like a finger beckoning, then a bloom the colour of old piano keys. And the hum. Evenings, when the traffic on the ring road dropped away, the boys from block C swore they could hear a low note rising off it, long and round, the way a kettle sings before it boils.

The council sent a man with a yellow sprayer. He stood at the grate with his mask pushed up and his mouth open, because the stem had already wound itself twice round the lamppost and was reaching for the stairwell wall. He sprayed. The next morning there was another curl, a little higher, and the petals had opened in the night over the bins, pale at the tips and shaded brown at the heart. He sprayed again, went home, and came back the following week with a different face.

In the end the stem climbed all fourteen storeys, one loop for each landing, until it reached Mrs Abernethy's window, where it tapped the glass in the mornings like someone asking to be let in. She let it in. She said the tea always tasted better after that, and the kettle never once failed to sing.