Black mandala tattoo with radiating petals and dotted edges on a woman's shoulder and upper chest, with a long braid hanging to one side.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo on a shoulder

Geometric · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A large black mandala with radiating petals, concentric rings and small dots at its edges sits across the shoulder and upper chest. The linework is fine and symmetrical, with dense detail and solid black areas forming the pattern. The image is black and grey against a dark top and background, with a long braid hanging beside the design.

Geometric Dotwork Shoulder Mandala Ornament Dot Petal Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The lock keeper at Stanley Ferry has finally taken the bent gate off, so we came through Tuesday with only the one hitch. Dad would have sworn at it for an hour. I just sat on the front deck with the tiller under my arm and watched the water go round in the chamber as if it had somewhere better to be.

I've started on the roof of the cabin, the way Mum always wanted. You remember the pattern she used to scratch into the lid of the coal box, the flower with rings inside rings and little dots pushed out at the edges like seeds? I've been copying it onto the boards with a nail and a pot of Stockholm tar. It takes me the whole afternoon to do one petal, and the paint keeps wanting to run where the grain dips, so I work from the middle outwards and trust the sums to hold.

Here is the odd bit. Last night a family off the Calder moored alongside us, the kids with buckets, and the littlest one lay on the towpath counting the rings out loud until her mother called her in. She got to eleven. I told her there was a twelfth hidden under the paint and she didn't believe me, so tomorrow I'm going to scratch it out just to prove her wrong.

Write back soon. The cat has taken to sleeping in the middle of the flower, which I'm choosing to take as a good sign.

Love, Nell