Black ink mandala tattoo covering the back of a hand and fingers, extending up onto the forearm, shown in a black and white photograph.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo across hand and fingers

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is shown with dense black ink ornament covering the back of the hand, with a large mandala-style medallion continuing up the wrist and forearm. The fingers carry smaller marks, including dots, short lines and angular motifs, and a thin ring sits on one finger. The linework is fine and detailed, shown in greyscale against a dark background with the hand lit from the front.

Hand Forearm Mandala Ornament Hand Finger Dot Line Geometric motif Ring

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite,

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The rain has been coming sideways across the Kingsway stalls since Tuesday, and Mr Okafor's awning has finally given up in the middle, so I am writing this on the back of a fish-crate invoice with a borrowed pencil. You will laugh, but the mandala stencil you sent for the lace shawl has been pinned to my workbench for a fortnight, and every time I look at it I think of your grandmother's tablecloth, the one with the nine concentric rings and the little hooked leaves that never quite closed.

Yesterday a girl came to the stall with a ring on her middle finger and a drawing folded into quarters. She wanted the ornament carried down from the wrist onto the knuckles, then the smaller marks climbing each finger like a ladder: a dot, a short stroke, an angular thing like a tiny gate. She said she wanted her hand to look like something that had been stitched rather than printed. I told her that was the only honest way to ask for it, and I meant it.

She sat so still I forgot the rain. The line on the back of her index finger ran straight as a plumb cord, and when I finished the last dot she looked at her hand for a long time, turning it under the lamp, and then she laughed and said her gran would have called it a sampler. I did not tell her that I had been practising those gates on the bread knife for a week.

Come down when the weather breaks. Bring the tablecloth. I will show you where the rings should close.

Yours, Imelda