Black henna-style yin yang sunburst with swirling vine linework on the back of a hand, shown underwater in a pool.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Yin yang sunburst design on a hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand reaches through clear pool water, with a dark ornamental design across the back of the hand and onto the fingers. A yin yang symbol sits at the centre of a sunburst-like flower, with curling swirls and dotted vine motifs extending towards the wrist and fingers. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the rippling light on the water gives the photograph a soft, blue-toned background.

Hand Yin yang Sun Sunburst Mandala Swirl Vine Dot Henna

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The floor of the Marine Pavilion had a sunburst painted at its centre, a black disc split in two by teardrops that curled round each other like a pair of slow swimmers. Every Saturday the dancers were told to keep off it. Mrs Ferrier, who taught the foxtrot to half the bay, said the mark was for luck. My brother Dennis said it was so the fishermen's sons had somewhere to stand and sulk.

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The summer I turned seventeen, Eddie Marsh came up from Plymouth with a tin of spirit and a plan to lift the old varnish. He worked on his knees with a rag and a bucket of vinegar water, and by the second week the teardrops had faded to grey, then the colour of wet slate. I asked him whether it mattered. He said the sun was the only thing in the room that never needed a partner to stay put, and that he'd rather see it bare than pretend.

On the last Saturday of August the band struck up a slow waltz and nobody could find the beat, so I walked out onto the middle of the floor and stood on the sunburst, waiting. Eddie stepped up behind me without asking. Then one couple followed, then another, until the whole hall was turning round that one dark point like water going down a plughole. Mrs Ferrier clapped twice, out of time, and laughed.

Eddie never finished the varnish. He caught the Monday tide with his bucket, and the paint stayed as dark as it had always been, because he had only been polishing the rim. Dennis still swears I made the whole thing up. I know that a room only holds its shape when it turns around one still point, and that is what I have danced from ever since.