Sheet of eight black symbol designs on white, including a tree, om, heart, lotus and triskel, each labelled in French and English.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Symbol sheet with tree, om, lotus and triskel

Botanical · Black and grey · Flash

A flat sheet of eight black symbol designs on a white background, each with a bilingual French and English caption. The designs include a tree, the Aum or Om character, a spiral heart, an abstract energy swirl, a spiral cross, a crescent with a sun-like motif, a lotus flower and a triskel. The artwork uses solid black fills and clean outlines with no shading or colour.

Botanical Geometric Tree Om Heart Spiral Strength Lotus Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sheet has been pinned above the drinks machine on Ward 9 since a visitor left it behind, eight black symbols on white paper, and at three in the morning you know their captions better than the drug charts. The tree with its loose leaves. The heart made of curls. The triskel, three spirals chasing their own tails, which Dev says looks like a sprinkler that has given up.

Keep reading

Mrs Okafor in bed six has asked you twice tonight whether the lotus is the one for peace or the one for getting up again. You tell her you are not sure, which is true. Her monitor chimes, and you walk past the bay where the blinds stay half down, check the line in her arm, the colour of her fingertips, the small steady numbers. Everything is where it should be, which is all anyone can ask of a ward at this hour.

Back at the station you find yourself drawing the Om on the back of a discharge form, slowly, the way your gran taught you to write numbers, top curve first. The pen runs dry halfway through the bottom loop, so you finish it with a biro that has been chewed flat. Dev comes in with two teas, looks over your shoulder and says it looks like a sleepy swan. You agree, because it does, and because nothing about the night needs defending.

At six the light comes up grey over the car park and the sheet on the wall looks ordinary again, just paper curling at one corner. You take it down, fold it into your locker, and leave the nail in the plaster, a small bright point where the sheet used to be.