Black linework mandala with a pink watercolour triangle and rainbow splashes, tattooed on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala and watercolour triangle on a thigh

Geometric · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A black linework mandala sits on the outer thigh, with a solid pink and magenta triangle at its centre. The right side of the design fades into loose rainbow watercolour splashes in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. The person wears pink denim shorts, and the framing crops the image to the thigh.

Geometric Thigh Mandala Triangle Watercolour Splash Rainbow Pink

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The landlady at Sandholm House keeps a tin of pastels under the hall stairs, and on wet afternoons she lets you have the kitchen table to yourself. You have been told the paints are for the guests, but nobody has come to Sandholm since August, and the sea has been throwing grey light against the bay windows all week.

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You start with a compass and a saucer, drawing rings inside rings in pencil until the table is lined with them. Mrs Okonedo, who has run the place since her husband left it to her in a will nobody contested, watches from the doorway with a cup of tea going cold. "Put the petals on the outside," she says. "Something has to face the weather."

You ink the mandala first, black and patient, each petal full of tiny loops that nearly close and never quite do. Then you fill the centre with a triangle, the pink of the shell pinned above the sink, and when you reach for water the colour bleeds past the lines. Splashes of red and orange and green run out across the paper like the storm tide that took the lower pier last winter, and you stop trying to keep them in.

When the sheet dries, Mrs Okonedo holds it to the window and says nothing for a long time. Then she folds it into four and tucks it into the pocket of your coat, which hangs by the door where the rain can't reach it. Tomorrow the ferry runs again. You will be on it, and the drawing will be on the far side of the water, still a little damp at its edges.