Black and grey lotus mandala tattoo with a row of dots below it, on the inner forearm of a seated person wearing a grey skirt.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus mandala on an inner forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed black and grey lotus flower sits on the inner forearm, with its petals filled with fine ornamental linework and dotted patterns that give a mandala-like design. A vertical line of three dots descends from the base of the flower, with a small dotted motif above it. The photo is taken from above, with the arm resting on a lap and the tattoo sharply focused against soft natural light.

Botanical Geometric Forearm Lotus Mandala Flower Dot Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marion,

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The cloth you sent came through the post soaked, which the postmaster took as a joke, so I have hung it over the rail to dry where the gulls can't reach it. Forgive the state of the paper. The lamp was out for six hours on Tuesday and I have been scraping salt off the lens ever since, which is a job that never ends and never gets thanked.

Something odd happened this week. On the inside of the lantern glass, where the spray dries white, a bloom of salt formed in the shape of a flower, eight petals opening out from a centre like a clock face. I wiped it away and it came back in the same pattern, finer each morning, as if someone were drawing it with a very small pen. Ellis, who relieves me on Sundays, says it's the damp. He says a lot of things about the damp.

I started counting the drops that fall from the gallery rail in the evenings, three at a time, each a little further apart than the last, until they stop at the water. I wrote them in the log in the same marks I use for the tide. Three dots, then the sea took the rest.

Mother always said the lotus grows up out of mud and still comes out clean. I thought that was nonsense until I watched the salt do it. So I am enclosing a drawing of the pattern as best I can manage, and I'd like you to keep it somewhere dry. Tell the children the light is burning. Tell them I counted every night.

Your brother, Tom