Drawn tattoo design of a yin yang symbol with a watercolour half and a blackwork mandala and lotus half, above the words find balance in script.

Yin yang mandala with find balance script

Blackwork · Mixed · Flash

A drawn design showing a yin yang symbol split between a vivid watercolour half in blue, purple, orange and pink and a detailed black and grey half filled with mandala patterns, a lotus and leaf forms. A small coloured mandala sits in the lower centre, and a spiral and petal-shaped mandala frame the upper and right edges. The words find balance are written in a handwritten script beneath, with grey ink drips running down from the mandala.

Blackwork Botanical Yin yang Mandala Lotus Leaf Spiral Petal Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ivy,

Keep reading

We made the fleet's first landing at Grimsby on Tuesday, and I have not slept since, so forgive the state of this paper. The skipper says we'll be out again on the Friday tide, which means the nets need mending tonight. Mum's old twine is in my bag, the good stuff she waxed herself, and I'm to sit under the lamp on the fish hold steps and knot until my fingers stop.

Something odd happened on the crossing. Off the Dogger, the sky split in two. On the east side the sun came up the colour of a paraffin flame gone soft, orange bleeding into violet, then a blue so thin you could see the next morning through it. The west side stayed black as tar, and the rain came off it in grey ropes that swung down to the water. Bill Stroud, who has fished forty years, stood at the rail with his cap in both hands and said nothing for a good while. Then he said the sea was only ever trying to get the two halves to agree.

I thought that was daft until the nets came up. Every mesh was tangled in the same spiral, a coil of weed wound round a little sun of rope, and Bill laughed and said that was the sea's signature. I've kept one bit of it in my pocket. I'll send it with the next post.

Love, Tom