Black and grey tattoo of an Om symbol with a meditating Buddha face and lotus flowers on the inner forearm.

Om symbol with Buddha and lotus on a wrist

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an Om symbol with a serene Buddha face with closed eyes, a bindi-like dot, and a lotus flower above and within the lower curl. The Buddha face and lotus petals use soft grey shading and highlights, while the outlines and background areas are solid black. The design fills the centre of the frame on pale skin, with the lower section of paisley-style ornament running down toward the wrist.

Forearm Om symbol Buddha Lotus Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The barge Mercy had carried coal up the Trent for forty years before anyone thought to ask what else was in her hold. That spring it held Nell Harrow's grandfather's brass bell, a cracked paraffin lamp, and a stone face no bigger than a plum, wrapped in oilcloth and tied to the bench with tarred string.

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Nell found the face when she scrubbed the bilge. It had closed eyes, a small dot on its brow, and a beard of shadow where the grey had worn into the stone. Her uncle said it came off a temple boat in the old Calcutta trade, that a lock-keeper at Gainsborough had taken it in payment for a debt, and that anyone who kept it aboard would bring bad water down on themselves. Nell kept it anyway, on a shelf above the stove, because the cook at Torksey said a thing that sat still long enough was always worth something.

In June the river came up brown and fast. At the weir below Newark the bow line fouled on a sunken post, and the Mercy swung broadside while the current pushed at her like a dog at a gate. Her uncle shouted from the tiller and his voice went thin. Nell did not shout. She knelt on the wet deck, took the line in both hands, and breathed the way the stone face looked as if it breathed, slow and without hurry, until her fingers stopped shaking and she could feel where the rope wanted to go.

The bow came free. The barge drifted into the still water under the lock gate, and the ripples spread out in rings that caught the light like pale petals. Her uncle said it was luck. Nell went below, stood on the bench, and pressed her thumb against the little dot on the stone's brow, as cool and smooth as the river had been.