Black and grey lotus mandala tattoo with dot accents on the side of the ribs, photographed in a mirror selfie.

Lotus mandala on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey lotus mandala sits on the side of the ribcage, with a column of dots above and below the flower. The petals and central medallion are built from fine linework, with dense hatching and stippled fill that give the motif depth. The photo is a mirror selfie taken indoors, with a cardigan lifted to show the tattoo and the rest of the room softly out of focus.

Botanical Geometric Ribs Lotus Mandala Dot Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The abbot wanted the lotus finished before the snow closed the pass, and I was the only one in the house with hands steady enough for the fine nib. I sat at the scriptorium table through the short days, pinning the sheet flat with river stones, while the wind pushed at the shutters like something wanting in.

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The flower took shape petal by petal. Each one I built from a single hairline, then went back with the hatching, lines so close together that from a yard away they blurred into shadow. At the heart sat the medallion, a small round door of concentric rings, and inside that a little seed of stippled dots I placed one at a time, counting under my breath so I would not lose my place. Above the petals and below them I drew the column of dots that the old masters called the thread, the line that holds the flower to the world. I made five above and four below, because the pattern demanded it and because I was tired of counting.

On the last evening the abbot came in with his lamp and studied the sheet for a long time. Then he told me a mandala is meant to be swept away once it is finished. The monks of the lower valley make them in coloured sand and brush them into the river so nothing is kept. I said I understood. I did not understand, not then.

That night I lay awake listening to the wind and thought of the thread of dots, how easily one could be left off a page and no one would notice. In the morning, before the sweeping, I took my pen and added one more dot, very small, beneath the flower where only I would know it was there. The abbot burned the sheet in the stove himself. The ash rose, and the dot went with it, and I kept the count anyway.