Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo with hanging chain and bead details, centred on a person's ribs below a grey knit top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo on the ribs

Dotwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A symmetrical mandala with a fan-like lotus shape at the top and a fine chain with drop details hanging below. Dotwork stippling and shaded fills build depth across the petals and concentric rings. The tattoo is centred on the midriff beneath a black garment, with hands and a grey knit top framing the image.

Dotwork Geometric Ribs Mandala Lotus Chain Bead Floral pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sea took Tom Harker's boat on a Tuesday, and by Friday the whole of Saltery Row knew that his widow, Agnes Tull, had carried her mother's sewing box up to the attic of Harbour House and would not come down to the lodgers' breakfast.

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She worked on a square of grey linen stretched across an old oar frame. She stitched a fan of lotus petals, each one a ring inside a ring, the way her mother had taught her to draw the tide's rings on wet sand with a stick. Below the petals she hung a fine chain and strung seven drops of jet along it, shaped like the seeds of the sea holly. Each drop was for a lodger who had gone out on the water and not come back in the same weather they left with.

A boy from the chandler's came up one evening with a torn oilskin and asked her why the chain was so long. She told him the chain was for counting, and the petals were for the ways the tide keeps its promises. He asked whether there would be an eighth drop. She said she had not yet found the bead for it.

The following morning the linen was pinned to the window, and the sun came through the petals and threw their rings across the floorboards. Agnes stood under them with her hair tied back in a strip of blue ribbon. She cut the ribbon, knotted it through the eye of a jet bead, and hung it at the end of the chain. Down on the shingle the tide turned, and for once it did not take anything with it.