Black and grey mandala tattoo with a central yin yang symbol and layered petal patterns, on the outer thigh.

Yin yang mandala on the outer thigh

Geometric · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large circular mandala sits on the outer thigh, built from layered petal shapes, scrollwork and fine decorative detail. A solid black and white yin yang symbol forms the centre, surrounded by a dark, leaf-like flower with dotted accents at the edges. The ink is entirely black and grey, with crisp linework and bold solid fills set against lightly lit skin.

Geometric Botanical Thigh Mandala Yin yang Lotus Petal Flower Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The order came up Hollin Lane on a Tuesday, pinned to a bread bag: a round cloth for the vicar's widow, no bigger than a dinner plate, and the note said only that it should look like a flower that had decided to be night. Ruth Carrow read it twice by the range, then put the kettle on and reached for her bobbins, because she had never once turned down a commission from Hollin Lane.

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The petals were the easy part. She pinned them out on the parchment in ranks, each row a little smaller than the last, and worked the scrolled ground between them in fine half-stitches until her eyes ached. The centre was where it turned difficult. Black silk and white linen would not sit side by side without fighting, and every test piece puckered into a grey smear. She unpicked three of them with a bodkin and threw the threads into the grate.

On the fourth morning she walked up through the birches to the old oak that had come down in the spring, where the bark still held a ring of pale lichen and a dark ring of moss beside it. She sat on the trunk with her flask and watched the light move across the clearing. The two colours never touched. Each had a small seed of the other tucked at its heart, and that was why the whole thing held.

She went home and set the centre again, black pass first, then white, and at the very middle she left one pinhole of undyed thread in the dark and one black knot in the light. When she lifted the cloth off the pins it lay flat as a moon on the table. The widow would not know why it looked so settled, and Ruth decided she would not tell her.