Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo with geometric petals and dots on the upper arm of a person wearing a sleeveless top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo on an upper arm

Dotwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large symmetrical mandala with a central flower, layered petals and stepped geometric edges sits on the upper arm, with smaller dots trailing above and below it. The linework is fine and the petals are filled with stippled dotwork and solid black shading that creates depth. The photograph is black and white and cropped at the lower face and upper torso, with the arm extended across the frame against a plain light background.

Dotwork Geometric Upper arm Mandala Flower Dot Petal Geometric pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Joe,

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The rosette came out of the old lectern on Tuesday, and I have been sitting with it ever since, trying to decide whether to tell Mrs Okafor it can't be saved. The flower is at the centre, eight petals cut in a fan, and each petal has the stepped edge the joiners in King's Lynn liked before the war. Round it, someone had punched hundreds of tiny holes into the oak, so that from the nave it looks like frost. I counted forty-one dots along the left arc before my magnifier fogged.

I went looking for the man who made it. The parish register names Walter Pell, joiner, who came to the village in 1911 to furnish a chapel and left a week after the wedding he was hired for. Nobody remembers why. What survives is a sketchbook in the vestry drawer, pages of mandalas drawn with a compass and a steady hand, every one ringed with dots like a border of stars.

On the last page there is a pencilled note: "Dots for the ones who went first. Petals for those who stay." Below it, someone had scratched out a second line, and only two words were left legible: "Mary, forgive."

I'm not going to restore the lectern to how it was. I'm going to leave the dotwork exactly as he cut it and let the new vicar decide what to do with it. Come home for Sunday dinner and I'll show you the sketchbook. Bring the good chisels.

Love, Mum