Colour tattoo of a lotus flower with a semicolon beneath it, placed at the back of the neck, shaded in pink and purple with teal outlines.

Lotus flower with semicolon at the nape

Botanical · Neck · Colour · Photo

A small lotus flower with five petals sits above a teal semicolon on the back of a neck, with hair pulled back around it. The petals are outlined in dark teal or black and shaded with pink and purple gradients, with a blue-teal dot and tail for the punctuation mark. The photo is taken from behind against a bright multicoloured wall, with the tattoo centred in the frame.

Botanical Fine line Neck Lotus Flower Semicolon Punctuation

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

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The lotus in the yard pond opened again this morning, the first of the year, pushing up through the brown water as if it had been waiting for someone to notice. Mr Hallam says they only flower if you leave them alone for a whole season, which I suppose is advice for everyone. I have been going through your mother's old proofs, the ones she set before the works closed, and found a semicolon in the margin she had marked in red ink and then circled twice. Beside it, in pencil, she had written: Not the end. Keep going.

She was always particular about that mark. Forty years at the case taught her that a full stop shuts a door, while a semicolon only leans it to, so the next line can walk in. The printers down on the quay used to laugh at her for fussing over a dot and a tail, but she would not let a compositor set one wrong, not even when the foreman told her nobody would notice.

So here is what I want you to know. The ship can wait a while longer. Sign on in the spring if you must, but come up the lane first and sit on the wall by the pond with me. I will show you the pencil note and the lilies, and we can argue about whether the water is cold enough to keep them honest.

Love, Aunt Win