Black and grey traditional tattoos of a bird, a sailing ship and an anchor on a man's forearm, with a rolled patterned shirt sleeve above.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bird, ship and anchor on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A man's forearm and hand are shown, with a bird and a scroll ornament near the elbow, a sailing ship below them, and a small anchor hanging on a line further down. The tattoos use bold outlines with solid black fill and grey shading, with no colour ink. The arm is framed against a white panelled wall, with a Hawaiian print shirt sleeve and dark jeans visible.

Traditional Forearm Bird Ship Anchor Scroll Sailing ship

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The swallow on my wrist is nearly two winters old, and the man in the chandlery says the ink will blur if I keep scrubbing it with carbolic. I told him I would scrub what I liked. You always said a swallow knows the way home, and you laughed when I had it done, the week before the Marguerite sailed with your little anchor sewn into the lining of your coat.

The island has changed. The fishermen have painted their hulls the colour of boiled sweets, and Mrs Okafor's hibiscus has climbed the whole harbour wall. Every evening I walk out to the point where the gulls sit on the old signal post and count the sails coming round the headland. Yesterday there were eleven. The sixth had a red band on its mainsail, the same red as your mother's front door, and I stood there until the light went off the water like someone snuffing a lamp.

I have stopped asking the harbour master for news. He only tells me the Marguerite was last seen off the Azores, which is a place and not an answer. So I have decided to be sensible. I have sold the boat your father left me, bought a tin of brown paint for the shutters, and tied a strip of your old sailcloth to the post as a marker for any ship that might need it.

This morning a swallow came down onto the sill and would not leave. It had a thread knotted round one leg, and on the thread hung a small brass anchor no bigger than a fingernail. I have not untied it yet. I am sitting here with the window open, waiting to see whether it will come back for an answer.