Two black swallow silhouettes above black script reading Follow your heart and Never look back, tattooed on two forearms.

Matching swallows and script quotes on wrists

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two solid black swallow silhouettes sit in flight on two pale forearms, with a script quote beneath each bird. The swallows are filled with solid black ink and the lettering is drawn in a fine, flowing black script with no shading. The image is in black and grey, with a dark cord bracelet and a small silver charm visible near the bottom edge.

Lettering Forearm Swallow Bird Script Quote Matching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas Hale had the Mary Ellen tied up at Brentford lock when his sister's letter arrived, folded twice and smelling of coal smoke. Nell wrote that the Thames sailing barges were finished, that the tugs had taken all the work, and that she had a berth on a coaster out of Southampton if he would only come. He read it standing on the cabin roof while the lock keeper's dog barked at the gulls.

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Their mother used to tell them that swallows return to the same barn every spring, that they never forget a roof. Nell had laughed and said swallows don't follow anybody. Now they both carried the bird, a dark wedge of ink on the inside of the wrist, each with a line of cursive beneath it. They had got them on the same wet afternoon in a back room on Tooley Street, from a man who charged a shilling apiece and told them to hold still.

Her line said 'follow your heart'. His said 'never look back', a joke at first, and then not a joke. He went below, lit the stove, and unfolded the chart of the estuary across the table. The barge needed fresh tar on her seams and a new tiller pin before the tide turned on Thursday.

On Thursday he cast off at first light with the water grey and flat as pewter. Under the bridge a pair of swallows dipped low over the surface, skimming, then rising sharp into the morning. He kept his eyes on the channel buoys. At the last bend he looked back once, just to see the lock gates close behind him, and the swallows had already gone.