Painted botanical flash design of three lotus flowers stacked vertically, in pink at the top, blue in the middle and purple at the bottom, on a white background.

Three stacked lotus flowers in pink, blue and purple

Botanical · Colour · Flash

The drawing shows three lotus blooms layered one above another, with the pink flower at the top, a blue flower with a yellow centre in the middle, and a purple flower at the base. The petals have bold outlines and soft watercolour-style shading that fades toward the edges of each bloom. The plain white background isolates the stacked design, which is arranged as a vertical composition.

Botanical Lotus Flower Petal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The rain has not let up since Tuesday and the stall is sodden at the corners, but the lotus man from Bermondsey finally came through with the crate you asked for. Three buds, packed in wet newspaper, and he swore they had come up from a pond outside Kent that morning. I did not believe him until I unwrapped them under the awning and the water ran pink off the first petals, then blue off the second, then a purple so deep it stained my thumb.

Mrs Okafor from the fishmonger's two doors down stood with me while I arranged them. She said her mother kept lotus in a bowl on the windowsill in Lagos and never let anyone move it, because the bloom opened over three days and each morning it looked like a different flower. I thought she was being sentimental until the pink one started to lift at the tip, and the blue one, which had been shut tight at dawn, showed its yellow heart to the grey street as if it had been waiting all night to be seen.

Customers keep asking if they're real. I tell them the truth: they are only as real as the water they sit in. Keep the tin full, change it every morning, and they'll open for you.

I've put the purple one at the base of the others in the tall jar, the way you said, so the whole thing stands up straight even when the wind comes off the river. Come by on Saturday before the rain sets in properly. I'll save you the best of them.

Love, Marian