Black fine line geometric tattoo of a vertical symmetrical ornament running down the centre of a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Vertical ornamental motif down the spine

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo of a vertical, symmetrical ornament runs down the centre of the upper back, built from diamond shapes, loops and pointed arms. The linework is fine and even, with small dots and tapering strokes along the edges. The image is black and white, and a thin chain necklace sits across the shoulders above the design.

Fine line Geometric Back Ornament Geometric motif Diamond Loop Spine Symmetry Chain

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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

The lift on Ward Six sticks between the second floor and the third, and at ten past three you have learned to wait it out with your palm flat against the cold steel, counting the way Mrs Ashdown taught you to count breaths. Nobody else is awake to see you do it. The corridor lights hum at a pitch you stopped hearing back in October.

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Your job is to move the things nobody wants to move in daylight: linen, empty trolleys, the drawers of unclaimed property that someone labelled in biro years ago. Tonight it is a cardboard box from the basement marked ORNAMENTS, and inside, wrapped in a tea towel, a brass hanging from some Christmas long gone. You turn it over. Its arms mirror each other exactly, diamonds stacked on diamonds, a loop at the top like a closed eye and a loop at the bottom like a knot pulled tight.

You hang it from the hook at the nurses' station because it is the only hook that will take the weight. Then you sit with your back against the wall and try to draw it on the back of a discharge form, one line at a time, the way your grandmother drew patterns on the front step with chalk. Every time your pen reaches the centre you lose your place. The symmetry keeps asking which side you started on.

At six the day staff arrive smelling of rain. Sister Okafor asks what you have been doing at the station, and you show her the drawing, which by then is more finished than you meant it to be. She holds it up to the window and turns it slowly, the way you would read a map. 'Hang that by the lift,' she says. 'Maybe it'll learn to stop sticking.'