Black ink lotus mandala tattoo with dotted lines above and below, centred on a woman's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus mandala on the upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's bare back shows a symmetrical lotus mandala tattoo in black ink, with pointed petals, inner geometric panels and a small dotted detail at the centre. Two vertical rows of dots extend above and below the design, which sits near the middle of the spine. The warm, soft-focus photograph has a plain beige wall behind and her hand resting at the back of her neck.

Dotwork Botanical Back Lotus Mandala Flower Dot Dotted line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The centre pole had been bare since the Easter fire, so Mr Pascoe asked me to paint the lotus back onto it before the last date in Gwent. I stood on a stepladder with a pot of black enamel and a pencil held between my teeth, copying from a faded programme cover he kept in his coat. Every petal had to point the same way as the one opposite. He was particular about that. Nothing else in the show had been straight for years, but the lotus would be.

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The inner panels were the hard part. Someone long dead had drawn them with a compass and a steady hand, little diamonds nested inside diamonds, and I spent three evenings learning them until my fingers knew the spacing without my eyes. Above and below the flower I ran two columns of dots, one every hand's width, to mark where the guy ropes had been pegged in better times. Pascoe said the dots were the only honest bit. They showed where the weight went.

On the last night of the tour we had eleven people in a tent built for four hundred. The clown forgot his second act. The horses were sold to a farm near Carmarthen the week after. Pascoe sat on an upturned bucket by the ring and watched the lamps swing while I climbed down to check the paint was dry.

He never said it was good. He put his palm flat against the wood, the way you test a loaf, and then he went out to the lorry and came back with a flask. The lamp caught the black lines and the centre dot shone wet. Outside, a dog barked at the field. We drank from the same cup and sat there until the light came up through the canvas and the lotus looked like it had always been there.