Black and grey drawing of a bird in flight with ornate, marbled wing feathers and a long forked tail, shown as a tattoo design on a plain white background.

Flying bird in black and grey

Black and grey · Flash

A bird in mid-flight with one wing raised high and the other extended low to the left, with its head turned to the right. The wings and tail are built from flowing, marbled feather patterns with light and dark swirls, and the body is shaded softly in greys. The design is isolated on a pale grey-white background with no skin or body part visible.

Bird Flying bird Feather Wing Swallow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The swallows came back to the eaves of the post house on Tuesday, the same pair as last year. I am almost sure of it because the male has a notch in his left wing where a feather grew in wrong. Mr Vasko says they don't know where they've been, only that they always come home. He had the clerk in the next booth stamp my letter twice so you'd know it was properly posted, then laughed at himself for being so careful.

Your papers are still in the grey tray. The officer with the moustache says they will be checked again on Friday, and again the Friday after that, and I have stopped asking him what the stamp means. I watch the birds instead. They drop across the barrier so low that the guards lift their caps, then climb straight up above the lorries as if the road were nothing to them.

On Thursday one of them took a loose thread from the bin by the fuel pumps, the blue cotton you used to tie your kite with. It flew up into the rafters with the thread trailing behind like a ribbon, and I thought of you on the far side, mending the sleeve of your coat by the window.

Come on Saturday if they let you through. Bring nothing that needs a stamp. I will be at the gate by seven, where the light comes in low over the water and the wings go almost silver. Watch for the swallows. They will show you the way across.