Colour tattoo of a pink lotus at the top of the spine, with grey stem lines and pink and purple petals falling down the back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pink lotus and falling petals on a back

Botanical · Back · Colour · Photo

A pink lotus flower sits at the top of the spine, with soft grey stem lines curving downwards and pink and purple petals scattered along the lower back. The petals are shaded with lighter edges and the stems use soft grey shading, giving a gentle, blended finish. The design is centred on the back and fills the length of the spine against plain skin.

Botanical Back Lotus Flower Petal Stem Spine

Find an artist for this

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

You are sent to the lower pond at Sennit Fell before the bell, because the abbot has decided the lotus must be cut back before the frost. Brother Oswin hands you the long-handled rake and says nothing about the mud up to your shins. The flower at the top of the pond opened in the night, pink as a fingernail, and it has already begun to drop its petals onto the black water.

Keep reading

The rule of the house is that nothing is swept while it is still falling. You learned that in your first winter, when you raked a path clean under the cloister arches and were made to kneel on the flags until supper. So you wait. Petals turn slowly on the surface, some caught in the grey stems that run down under the water like smoke trails, and one lands on the sleeve of your habit and stays there. You want to brush it off. You don't.

Oswin comes down the steps with a lantern though it is not yet dark. He looks at the pond, then at you, and asks how many petals you have counted. You say you stopped at forty. He says the lotus does not care for counting, only for the ones that reach the ground, and he sends you up the hill with a basket and instructions to gather only what has already reached the gravel path.

By the time you reach the gate the basket is light and the path is scattered in pale pink, a line of them running from the water to the bell house, each one curled at the edge as if lit from within. You leave them where they lie. At the bell the first note goes out over the valley, and the petals lift a little, as if someone had breathed on them.