Black and grey mandala tattoo with dotwork rings and petal shapes on the side of a person's ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala tattoo on the ribs

Geometric · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A round mandala design sits on the side of the torso, with a star-like outer ring of petals, a central circle of interlocking loops, and a dotted band between the rings. The lines are fine and even, and the dotwork and shading give the piece depth. The design is in black ink only and is centred on the frame, with a fabric edge visible at the top right.

Geometric Dotwork Ribs Mandala Circle Petal Dot Loop Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every morning before the bell, Brother Oswin knelt in the east cloister and drew a circle in the frost with a nail set into a length of ash. The prior said frost was for footprints and not for pictures, but the prior's knees were poor and he never came out before the second bell, so Oswin went on drawing.

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He began with eight points and worked outward, adding petals until the lines reached the cold gravel at the foot of the pillars. At the centre he left a plain disc no wider than a communion wafer, because the old rule said the heart of a thing should be left alone. Between the two rings he pressed a band of dots with his thumb, counting them under his breath so that no two sat out of step.

The winter the frost failed to come, he drew in the wet snow instead, and then in the mud when the snow went. Novices who carried water past him began to giggle, then to stop giggling and stand and watch. Tamsin, who had come to the abbey with nothing but a cough and a bad pair of boots, asked him once what the loops were for. “They go round without ending,” he said, “which is what a prayer ought to do.” She thought about that for a week.

On the morning of the thaw the prior came out early, grumbling, and found the whole pattern dusted white again. Round the outer ring ran a line of small bird prints, hopping from dot to dot and never once stepping into the petals. Nobody ever learned who had kept the drawing alive through the winter, and Oswin, when asked, only shrugged and said the birds had been counting.