Black fine line lotus flower tattoo with a dotted stem on a person's upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Lotus flower on the upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A lotus flower in delicate black linework sits on the upper back, with its petals outlined and softly shaded and its stem running downward and ending in a trail of small dots. The lines are thin and varied in weight, with some petals left mostly open and others filled with light grey shading. The soft, neutral background keeps the focus on the tattoo.

Fine line Botanical Back Lotus Flower Stem Dot Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tank in the back of Haddow's chandlery was the only warm thing on the quay, and you learned early not to touch the water in it. Your grandfather kept a lotus there in a sawn-off barrel, its leaves flat as dinner plates, and every morning before the tide he tipped a jug of rainwater over the stem so the drops ran down it and off the end like a row of full stops.

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The summer you turned sixteen the bloom came late, pale pink going to cream at the edges, and the harbour master's wife came in to see it. She stood over the barrel with her hand at her collar and said it was the first she had seen open in Porthcullen since the year the breakwater went. You said nothing. You were already counting the dots on the stem, the way he had taught you, nine of them, one for each winter the plant had survived in a shed.

He died in October. You kept the barrel going on rainwater and bad temper, and in February the plant put up one new stalk that went black at the tip, and you could not decide whether it was rot or a seed. The chandlery sold to a man from the city who wanted the building for bait. Before the van came you carried the barrel down the slip at low water and tipped it, leaves and all, so the stem drained into the grey channel.

Now you tell people it was only a flower. When they ask why you walk the slip at dawn with an empty jug, you say the harbour needs watering. The last drop leaves the stem and goes out past the light, one dot after another, the way he taught you to count.