Black linework design of an om symbol above a lotus flower, with a flowing vertical stem and curled flourishes, drawn on plain white paper.

Om symbol above a lotus flower design

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

The design shows an om symbol with a teardrop mark above it, sitting over an outlined lotus with five petals. A thin vertical stem with curled flourishes runs through the centre and extends above and below the flower. The image is black ink linework on a white background, with no shading and no colour.

Botanical Om Lotus Flower Flourish Stem Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The council's letter said the pond at Sallow Green was to be drained by the first of March, so I was the one who had to go in up to my knees with a bucket and waders that leaked. Mrs Achterberg had planted the thing in 1987 and nobody had noticed, because nobody looks at a pond in January. Its leaves had died back to brown paper. What remained was a fat black root the size of a loaf, knotted like rope, and at the top a single green stalk with a bud closed tight as a fist.

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I should say I am not a religious man. My father sang in a Methodist choir in Huddersfield, and I spent my Sundays kicking a ball against the chapel wall. But Mrs Achterberg had left a note tucked behind the potting shed door, pencilled on the back of a seed packet: Keep the quiet part. Keep the mud. It opens when it likes. I took it for the ramblings of a woman who had buried two husbands, and I put it in my coat pocket, where it has stayed.

The bud opened on the second Tuesday of March, while the drainage men sat parked by the gate with their engines running. Five petals, pale as milky tea, rose out of water gone the colour of pewter. Above them the surface lay perfectly still, and a drop gathered on the tip of one leaf and hung there, catching the light, neither falling nor staying.

I rang the council and told them the pond was no longer a hazard but a sanctuary, which was a lie, and they said someone would come in April. Then I knelt at the edge with the note in my hand and watched the drop until it finally let go, and I found I had forgotten to check my watch.