Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala and paisley tattoo on the back of a hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand with black nail polish and several silver rings, one with a turquoise stone, rests against a plain light background. A large black ornamental design of a central mandala with paisley and scrolling floral elements spreads across the back of the hand and down towards the wrist. The fine, detailed linework and dense solid fills give the design a sharp, even finish.

Hand Mandala Paisley Floral Ornament Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The net came up off the Ardmore slip at four in the morning, folded wrong, the way Dad's never were. I stood on the wet boards with my boots full of cold and watched Cathal pick at the knots with a bent nail, and I knew from the set of his shoulders that he'd been up before us and found something he didn't want to say aloud.

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Inside the mesh, tangled through the floats, was a sheet of old chart paper folded into a square and gone soft as cloth. Someone had drawn a ring on it in ink, then wound smaller rings inside that, then petals, then curling stems that ran off the edges like weed. It was a mandala of sorts, Dad would have said, or a paisley pattern from the shawls his mother brought back on the boat in 1958. Cathal said it was a map. I said it was a bad joke from a bored deckhand.

We spread it on the fish-house table under the strip light and weighted the corners with a gutting knife and two lead sinkers. The scrolls matched the lines of the bay exactly: every curl a reef, every ring a fathom mark, and in the centre, where the petals met, a small hard dot that Cathal swore was the wreck of the Fidelis. I wanted to laugh. Instead I walked down to the harbour wall at dawn and looked at the water, and the swell was turning over the same shapes, dark spirals sliding through the grey.

We did not go out that day. We took the boat round to the dot at slack water with the handlines in our fists, and under the hull the bottom fell away in a slow spiral, exactly as drawn. Cathal hauled up a brass cleat, green and beautiful. Neither of us spoke of the map after. Dad's net went back on the rack, mended, and the paper went in the stove, because some things are only worth keeping long enough to find them.