Black linework lotus tattoo with pink fill and dotted swirls on the sole of a foot, with teal toenails.

Lotus flower tattoo on the sole of a foot

Botanical · Other · Mixed · Photo

A bare foot sole shows a lotus-style flower tattooed in black linework with dotted accents and curling swirls. The petals are partly filled with pink-coral ink, with the outline and details left in black. The flower sits near the ball of the foot and the toes are visible at the top of the frame.

Botanical Dotwork Other Lotus Flower Swirl Dot Foot Toe Nail polish Butterfly

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide has turned by the time you reach the slipway, and Mrs Okonedo's pots of dye are already lined along the chandlery sill, the coral one nearest the glass where the morning sun catches it. You have three hours before the Kestrel ferry noses in with the new bolt of sailcloth, and your aunt has left a sheet of tracing paper pinned to the bench with a single brass tack. On it is a lotus, drawn so many times the lines have gone soft at the edges.

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You transfer it to the cloth with a stick of blue chalk. Petals first, the outer ring, then the dots along each edge, one pinprick at a time, because your aunt always said a petal without its dots is just a leaf that has given up. The curling swirls come last, spilling out from the base like the wake off a tender. Gulls walk the quay outside, unbothered. A boy from the net loft sits on the step and asks what it is for, and you tell him it is for a flag that does not exist yet.

The ferry comes early, and the captain's wife is with the purser, wanting the same flower stitched onto the cabin door of her husband's boat, the Lotus Bay, a name given by a man who had never seen one. You tell her the flower only opens in water and needs the damp to belong anywhere. She laughs and orders two.

By dusk you have rubbed the madder dye into the petal centres, leaving the black lines hard and dark. When the lamps come on along the quay, the flower on the door looks wet, as if someone has just lifted it out of the harbour and set it down to dry.