Black and red tattoo on the inner forearm showing an Om symbol above a red lotus flower and an endless knot, with small dots above and below, in a linework style.

Om, lotus and endless knot on a forearm

Botanical · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A vertical arrangement on the inner forearm shows a black Om symbol at the top, a red and pink lotus flower in the middle, and a black endless knot below it, with three small dots above and below the motif. The Om and knot are drawn in bold black outlines with light shading, while the lotus petals are filled with red ink and fine hatching. The design is centred on the forearm against a plain skin background with a dark, out-of-focus backdrop.

Botanical Forearm Om symbol Lotus Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okonedo's old classroom still smells of chalk and radiator dust, though someone has strung paper lanterns across the ceiling for the evening. You stand beneath them with a plastic cup of warm prosecco and read the name cards on the trestle table as if they were exam results. Priya Rowe, Kieran Dodd, Tom Wilde. Most of them are on the form you were sure would still be arguing over who got the seat by the window.

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Kieran finds you first. He keeps apologising for a bald patch and mentioning a daughter at Cambridge. He asks whether you still paint, and you say only on the backs of envelopes, which is true. He says you were the only one who could draw a lotus that looked wet. You don't tell him you learned it from the pond behind the sports field, where you used to go after detention to watch the mud and the flowers take turns with the light.

Later, by the fire doors, you find the old register. Someone has kept it in a biscuit tin. Beside your name, in Mr Ansell's careful pencil, is a doodle you made in the margin the year you turned fourteen: a loop of string that never quite finishes, tangled round three small dots. You told him it meant the same things keep coming back. He wrote underneath, *do try to pay attention*.

On your way out you stop at the window. Over the car park the sky has gone the colour of the lantern light. You hum the low note Mrs Okonedo used in assembly to settle the year sevens, the one that starts in the chest and keeps going until it has nowhere else to go, and you hum it all the way to the gate.