Black and grey dotwork mandala tattoo with a central om symbol on the upper back of a woman with long brown hair.

Mandala with om symbol on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is shown from behind with a large circular mandala tattoo centred between her shoulder blades. The design has a central om symbol surrounded by layered petal shapes, geometric motifs and rings of dots. The tattoo is in black ink and grey tones, with stippled shading creating depth, and it is framed by her hair and a pale strappy top.

Dotwork Geometric Back Mandala Om symbol Dot Petal Geometric pattern Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The Bramley rows are dropping early this year, and I have spent three evenings on my knees under them counting windfalls, because Dad says a man can read the whole season from what falls. I am not a man, so I have had to count for myself. They land in rings round the trunks, the way dust settles round a jar lid. You would laugh at me. I have started drawing them in the margin of the ledger.

The ledger is the blue-covered one from Gran's time. On its first page she drew a circle of petals with a dot at the middle and wrote underneath only 'hold still'. I thought it was a joke about pickers. Last Tuesday the wasps got into the cider vat and the whole yard went quiet with a sound like a note held too long, and I stood there with the ladder on my shoulder and understood she meant the hum, not the pickers.

Dad took the ladder off me and sent me to the far end, where the old Russets stand in a ring of their own. Under the third tree I found a scatter of small dark dots pressed into the grass, arranged in a perfect circle, and no apple had fallen there in ten years. I stood in the middle and did not move. The wasps circled me once and went on past.

Come up at the weekend and bring your compass. I want you to tell me whether the circle I have drawn is true, or whether I have only copied what I wanted to find. Bring the good pencils too.

Your sister, Ruth