Two lower legs in a bath of foam, with a red rose and ornate black linework on the left leg and a colourful swallow on the right leg, in neo-trad style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Rose and swallow leg tattoos in a bath

Neo-trad · Calf · Colour · Photo

The photograph shows two bare legs resting in bathwater with bubbles, with red-painted toes visible at the top of the frame. The left leg carries a large red rose with black outlines and ornamental, mandala-like filigree behind it, while the right leg shows a swallow in teal, red and orange with bold black outlines. The image is taken at an angle and the colour is saturated, with strong contrast between the warm skin tones and the inked designs.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the band's third number before you learn the name of the man who dances it with you. The Saltcombe Pier Ballroom has a ceiling of plaster scrolls and ferns, painted gold by a firm from Bristol that went bust the year after, and from the cloakroom hatch you can count the curls while you hang up other women's coats. Tonight the trumpet player counts in the foxtrot with his heel, and the floor clears for a sailor in a navy jersey who has been watching you since the doors opened.

Keep reading

His name is Ronan Pask, and he has a swallow inked on his forearm, teal and rust, which he had done in Gibraltar the month before his first ship went out. "They come home to the same eaves every spring," he tells you over the lemonade, "whatever the sea's done to them." You say that's sentimental for a man who has been to Gibraltar. He laughs, a short bark, and asks if you'll dance the quickstep so he can stop talking.

You dance. His hand is steady at your back, the red rose you pinned to your skirt catches the lights, and for three minutes the scrolls on the ceiling seem to turn with you like the face of a slow clock. Then the band stops mid-bar, the manager flicks the lamps up, and you see the ballroom plainly for once: scuffed boards, the cloakroom hatch, your coat still on its hook where you left it.

Ronan goes out on the Tuesday tide. You keep the brass ticket he pressed into your palm, number forty-one, and in April a single swallow comes down to the pier rail and sits on the iron scroll above the doors, looking in.

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