Black and grey tattoo of a sun with a crescent moon, a peace sign wreathed in daisies and a flower with a yin yang centre, stacked down the middle of a woman's back.

Sun, peace sign and flower down a back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Three tattoos are stacked vertically down the centre of the back: a sun with a crescent moon overlapping it and dotted rays, a peace sign wreathed in small daisies, and a layered flower with a yin yang at its centre. The work uses fine shaded linework with stippled dots in the sun's rays and soft grey shading on the moon and petals. The image is entirely black and grey, with the subject photographed from behind in a car interior.

Dotwork Botanical Back Sun Moon Peace sign Daisy Flower Yin yang

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Agnes, the frost has finally left the herb beds, so I have started on the daisies again. Brother Tomas says I am wasting good soil on weeds, but the abbot allowed it once the infirmarian decided the flowers were for the sick ward, which is a kind lie that suits us both. I dig them out of the lawn by the sundial and set them in a ring around the bronze dove the novices cast for the Jubilee, and the ring closes a little more each spring.

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The sundial is the reason I am writing. Last Tuesday, before Vespers, I stood where I always stand and watched the shadow crawl toward the seventh hour. The sun was still high over the east wall, and yet a pale moon hung above the bell tower, so faint I took it for a smudge on the glass. Tomas said it is always there in daylight if you know where to look. I did not believe him until I counted the stones along the cloister and found it exactly where he said, with the sun's rays spilling out round it like seed from a split pod.

All winter I thought the garden was two gardens, one for the dead in the north plot and one for the living by the kitchen door. The bees did not agree. They went from the lavender to the daisies without troubling about the difference, and I began to think the gap was mine to mend. So I have pressed a single flower into the wet clay at the foot of the dial, one petal left white and one darkened with ash from the stove, half and half, a little crooked.

Tomas will call it a mistake. Come in the autumn, when the rain comes sideways off the moors, and you will see it has not washed away.