Black and grey yin yang tattoo with ornate filigree scrollwork and a bold brush stroke across the top, on a man's upper chest near the shoulder.

Yin yang with filigree on the chest

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey yin yang symbol sits on the upper chest, with its outer ring drawn in heavy, uneven brush-like strokes. Inside, the dark half is filled with ornate filigree and swirling scrollwork, while the light half has a single small swirl and a solid white dot. A bold black brush stroke sweeps across the top of the circle toward the shoulder.

Blackwork Chest Shoulder Yin yang Filigree Swirl Brush stroke Circle Scrollwork

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad never let anyone else lift the big brush, so when his wrist went on the Tuesday before Sawley Fair, I was the one standing on the trestle with the pot of black, trying to close a circle he had left open for thirty years.

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The circle was meant for the canopy of the Ferris wheel. He had painted the rest of the wagon already, and Mum had insisted on a yin and yang for her fortune booth, the one where she laid her filigree silver out on green baize. She did the dark half herself, lacework curling in and out of the black like frost on a window. Dad never touched it. He said the outer ring had to go round in one breath or it was only paint, so every morning he dragged the brush through in a heavy sweep, then flicked the tail out toward the shoulder of the wagon like a crow lifting off a fence.

My ring came out wrong. The paint pooled at the bottom and skipped wherever the wood had grain. Mum came out of the booth with her magnifier on a cord and studied it for a long time, then studied me. She didn't say it was wrong. She took the fine brush and put a single curl in the light half, the only ornament she allowed there, and it sat beside the ragged edge as if it had always belonged.

Dad's dot went in last, a round of bare board left in the black, which Mum said was for the light to sit in. I told her that was the most sentimental thing I had ever heard. She laughed, and the wheel turned for the first time on the Friday, with the outer ring still tacky at the edges.