Two blue swallow tattoos in a traditional style, one on each inner wrist of a person with their hands clasped together behind the body.

Blue swallows on both wrists

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Two matching swallows in flight are tattooed on the inner wrists, each shown in profile with the head turned up and the forked tail extended. The birds are drawn in blue ink with dark outlines and short hatched lines on the wings for shading. The shot is framed from the waist up against a plain grey background, with a lace top and dark jeans visible.

Traditional Forearm Swallow Bird Wing Wrist

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows were already back at the refuge when Matteo's mule came up the last switchback, a week before anyone sensible expected them. I counted seven under the eaves, each one stitching the air between the snowbank and the door, and I remembered my father saying a swallow never arrives early unless it has something to find.

Keep reading

The pass above Sella Nera was not a road by then, only a line of cairns the carriers had built and rebuilt for three hundred years. Nobody crossed in March. I had come up with the last of the salt because the valley had no bread left, and because the letter from the lowland mill said my brother would be on the far side of the ridge with his wages, if he was still alive to carry them.

The hut keeper, Ruth Aubry, who had wintered there alone since her husband died, watched me unload the sacks and said the swallows returned to the same nests every spring, even when hail knocked them down. 'They'd rather freeze in the old place,' she said, 'than go looking for a new one.'

I slept badly. At first light a single bird dropped off the eaves, banked hard against the wind over the drop, and came back with straw in its beak. Far below, through the thinning cloud, a thread of smoke was rising from the mill road. I put the kettle on and left the door open so the birds could see inside.