Black and grey lotus mandala tattoo with dotwork detailing and a row of dots below, placed centrally on the chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus mandala on the chest

Botanical · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical lotus flower sits at the centre of the chest, with layered petals filled with ornamental scrollwork and inner patterns. The design uses fine black linework and stippled shading to create depth, with a dotted bead chain hanging beneath the bloom. The image is a close, black and white photograph with the tattoo filling most of the frame against pale skin.

Botanical Dotwork Chest Lotus Mandala Petal Dot Bead Flower Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mr Ashdown,

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I am sorry the back parlour smelt of turpentine when you called on Tuesday. Mrs Pryce has given up the lodgers' pantry to the new girl from Penzance, who paints lotus heads on the tins of our Sunday tea service, and I have had to make do with the landing. You will want to know that the crockery is still whole. Two saucers came out of the kiln cracked, and she laughed about it and said the cracks were the petals opening.

I have kept the bead chain she bought off the Bristol man from the shop on the pier. It hangs in a dish by the window, forty-one small black beads strung on thread the colour of wet slate. When the wind comes off the Channel the chain swings and taps the glass like someone wanting in. Mrs Pryce says it is bad luck to keep a thing that rattles. I say it is the only thing in this house that keeps time.

She finished the last cup on Thursday, a plain one with no pattern at all, and set it on the sill to dry. The tide was out so far you could walk to the rocks. I watched her from the landing, a small figure in an apron, bent over the sand with her pencil, drawing the same flower again and again in the wet, every petal turned inward to meet the centre, as if the centre were the only part that mattered.

You may collect the rent at the usual hour. Tell the Ashdowns the room is still theirs. I will leave the window open a crack so the chain can speak to you on the stairs.

Yours, with respect, Edith Marlowe