Black ink drawing on paper of a dotwork mandala beside handwritten script reading For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.

Mandala design with script quote

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing on plain paper shows a symmetrical mandala of layered petals, scalloped rings and a central flower, with stippled dots along its outer edges. Handwritten cursive script runs vertically beside it, reading For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. The linework is fine and even, and the composition places the mandala at the lower right with the text rising above it.

Dotwork Lettering Geometric Mandala Flower Script Quote Petal Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The flood came down the Severn in the third week of March, brown and fast enough to lift the moorings out of the bank. I was alone aboard the Patience with the engine coughing and the cabin stove gone out, and I remembered the verse my Nan had painted on the lockside board years before, copied from the chapel wall. I had always thought it an odd thing to paint on a lock gate.

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Nan had painted roses and castles on narrowboat doors until her hands stiffened, and she could draw a rosette so fine you could count the petals from the towpath. Her last one hung above the tiller, a round of scalloped rings with dots pricked along the rim like frost on a window. Every time I took the boat out she tapped it and said nothing, which was how she spoke when she meant be steady.

So I stood at the tiller with the water pulling at the hull and did what she had taught me, which was to look at the centre of the thing and not at the speed of the water around it. Little by little the bow came round. The mooring rope held. A heron lifted off the bank, unbothered, as if the river were a sensible place after all.

We tied up at the next lock before dark. I unhooked the old rosette, wrapped it in oilcloth, and put it in the keeper's drawer where Nan kept her brushes. Some things you keep for the next person who needs a steady hand, and some things you hand back to the people who taught you to be brave in the first place.