Small black fine line bird silhouettes in a row across two fingers of a hand, with a coloured tattoo partly visible on a forearm at the right edge.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Row of small birds across two fingers

Fine line · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Five tiny black bird silhouettes are spaced in a row across the fingers of one hand, each in a different pose. The linework is thin and solid black with no shading, set against pale skin. The background is a dark sleeve and a red surface, and a coloured tattoo is partly visible on the forearm at the right edge.

Fine line Hand Bird Silhouette Finger tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every May the swifts come back to Hollins House, and every May Dennis from the caretaker's office swears he'll have the gaps under the roof sealed before they land. He never does. I count them from the walkway while the kettle goes, five dark shapes peeling off the top of the block as if someone had flicked them off a page.

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My granddaughter taught me to count them on my fingers the first summer I lived on the eleventh floor, one for each knuckle, the thumb left out because it never wanted to join in. Five was the number that stayed. One perched on the aerial, one tilted over the railings like it was checking the car park, one slid past the window of flat 41 at a speed that made Mrs Okafor shout, one hung in the air with its wings flat as if it had forgotten where it was going, and the last one kept circling back for no reason I could see.

Last spring the letter came. Hollins was coming down, the flats emptied by the autumn and everyone sent across the river to places with lifts that worked. Dennis rang to say not to fret, the birds would find another roof. I told him they would find one for themselves, which was more than anybody had offered us.

On the last morning I stood on the walkway with my hand held up, five fingers spread, and counted them out loud as they went over the car park. One, two, three, four, five. Then there were only the gulls, and I had never once been fond of gulls.