Close view of a small black Om symbol tattoo on the back of a person's neck, below dark reddish hair and above a white top.

Om symbol on the back of neck

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a person's neck with dark reddish hair pulled up above it and a white top at the collar. A bold black Om symbol sits centrally on the nape, with solid, slightly brushed strokes and a crescent and dot at the top. The tattoo is in black ink on a light skin tone, with a plain, softly lit background.

Neck Om Symbol

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ovens take an hour to come up to heat, and Mrs Okafor says you must never rush them, so you stand at the mixer with your sleeves pushed past the elbow and listen to the bread doing what it does without you. The dough makes a low, patient sound against the steel bowl. Nobody else is in yet. The street outside is still the colour of wet slate, and a single bus sighs past the shutter, then nothing.

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Mrs Okafor's son Tobi left the shop three winters ago to sell cars in Leeds, and since then the bakery has run on a rota of people who all say the same thing about the ovens: they hum if you listen long enough. You never believed it. You listened anyway, every morning, because the alternative was thinking about the letter in your coat pocket that you have not posted.

At half past five the deck oven gives its low note, a sound like a monk clearing his throat, and you find yourself with your palm flat on the cold tray, feeling for it. Then you cut the first loaf, a round with a thumbprint of flour on the crust, and you score it in one long curve that stops and turns back on itself. Mrs Okafor, arriving late with her box of pastries from the wholesaler, looks at it over her glasses and says nothing, which from her is a blessing.

You post the letter on the way home, before the sun is properly up, and the postbox is still cold when your hand touches it.