Black linework lotus tattoo with ornamental mandala patterns inside the petals, shown in a circular crop with no body part visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lotus mandala tattoo

Botanical · Black and grey · Photo

A lotus flower in black linework fills the frame, with layered petals at the top and sides and a central ornamental motif below. The inner petals and the lower section are filled with fine dotted and patterned detail, while the outer petals use open outlines. The image is black and grey on a pale skin background, shown in a circular crop.

Botanical Geometric Lotus Mandala Flower Petal Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The band at the Palais had finished its third waltz before Mr Abernethy stood up from the bench with his box of chalk. He was a retired draughtsman from the shipyard, and he drew the way other men smoked, without looking. Each Saturday he laid a lotus across the sprung maple floor, outer petals open and single-lined, inner petals packed with tiny dots and crosshatch until the chalk looked like frost. Nobody was allowed inside it. Dolores in the cloakroom said it would last until someone stepped on the middle and he sulked for a month.

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I was the one who stepped on it. It was a Friday in late October, the lights turned low, and I had come in from the rain with wet shoes and my hair coming down. The foxtrot carried me round the outer ring, then the petals drew me inward the way the tide pulls at the harbour mouth. I counted the dots under my heels because it was easier than looking up. At the centre sat a knot of ornament, curled and symmetrical, and when the music dropped to nothing I stood on it and felt the whole floor hold its breath.

Abernethy did not shout. He waited until the band packed up and the mop boy came sloshing across with his bucket, then he knelt beside the last clean stripe of chalk and copied the knot onto the back of an envelope with a carpenter's pencil, pressing hard enough to dent the paper. "The petals are for showing off," he said. "The middle is what you keep." He folded the envelope into my glove and walked out into the rain without his coat.