Black and grey fine line tattoo of overlapping lotus petals on the inner forearm.

Overlapping lotus petals on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single-needle style outline of a lotus-like flower made from overlapping pointed petals, with the leaves fanning out from a common base. The thin, even black linework has no shading, and the design sits on the inner forearm, photographed in black and white against a light background.

Fine line Geometric Forearm Lotus Flower Petal Leaves Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dennis had drawn the same flower forty-one times before the petals sat right. Compass and set square on the kitchen table, the lino cold through his socks, the radio talking about bus fares. Each petal had to overlap its neighbour by the same thin sliver or the whole thing sagged like a wet sail. Margaret used to say he could draw a cathedral on a bus ticket and it would still look tidy.

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The lotus was meant for the bin store gate at the bottom of Harcourt House, a gate that had been rusting since before the estate was painted. Flats forty to fifty-eight had been petitioning the council for years, and the only things that ever grew on the estate were damp and complaints. Dennis took his drawing down to the housing office, where a lad called Ryan, lanyard swinging, told him kindly that there was no budget for flowers.

"I don't want money," Dennis said. "I want a pattern on the gate. Steel, cut thin. Lines only, no fill, so the light comes through." Ryan looked at the drawing for a long time, then at the ceiling. Then he asked whether Dennis could come back on Thursday with measurements, because the depot lad had a laser cutter in his brother's unit and owed Ryan a fiver.

By June the gate was up. The petals threw thin black shadows across the concrete at teatime, and the children from the fourth floor stood in them with their arms out, trying to fit a shadow over their own. Dennis watched from the bench with his pencil still behind his ear. Nobody asked him whose flower it was, and he thought that was a fair thing to leave unanswered.