White ink tattoo of a lotus mandala with script characters in its petals, placed on the upper back and styled as fine geometric linework.

White ink lotus mandala on upper back

Geometric · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A white ink tattoo of a lotus flower mandala sits on the upper back. Eight petals surround a central circle holding a stylised symbol, and each petal contains a character resembling Sanskrit or Tibetan script. The fine white linework is even and well defined, and the surrounding skin is slightly red, which suggests the tattoo may be fresh.

Geometric Botanical Back Lotus Mandala Script Petal Symmetrical design

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp room at Hollin Pit smells of paraffin and wet stone, and on your first morning Idris Vane hands you a tin of whitewash and a brush worn down to a nub. 'Eight petals,' he says, 'and the middle one last, or the roof comes down on the afternoon shift.' You have been at the colliery nine days, and you have learned not to argue with men who have buried friends.

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He shows you the pattern pinned to the board, copied from a prayer card his mother kept tucked in her Bible, the characters crowded inside each petal like seeds in a pod. You cannot read them and neither can he, not properly, only the shapes. He traces the stroke order in the air with one finger. 'Each one's a name,' he says. 'Not ours. The ones the mountain took before the war, that the company never bothered to write down.'

You work through the morning with the brush held loose, the way he taught you, so the lines come out fine and even on the cold brick. Men pass beneath you with their lamps lit and nod at the wall without looking at it. By noon seven petals are done, and the circle at the centre is still bare, waiting for a name Idris has not yet said aloud.

He does not come to the lamp room after the bell. A boy from the shaft brings you his tin and his brush, and a folded slip of paper with the last character drawn on it, carefully, as if the hand had been steady for once. You dip the brush and, for the first time, you write the centre without looking at the pattern, the strokes coming as easily as breath, and you do not ask whose name it is.