Black script reading sempre con voi with a simple bird outline on the upper arm, shown in two stacked photos.

Sempre con voi script and bird on upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the Italian phrase sempre con voi in black cursive lettering with a line-drawn bird in flight to the right. The top photo is on warmer skin and the bottom on paler skin, with the lettering and bird outline clearly visible in both. The fine, even black linework sits on a plain background of skin.

Lettering Fine line Upper arm Script Bird Text Flying bird Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Paolo the fiddler played every Saturday in the hall above the salt works, and every Saturday a grey bird sat on the rafter beam and watched him. Nobody knew whose it was. The women said it was a swallow that had lost its way south, and the men said it was only a pigeon with ideas.

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In the spring the miller's daughter, Nina, came to dance with a sailor from Trieste, and Paolo played so slow that the sailor's feet stopped moving. When the sailor went back to sea in May he promised to send word. No word came. By August the hall was full of other dancers, and the bird was still on the beam, turning its head toward the door.

Paolo asked the old woman who swept the floor what the bird wanted. She said birds want nothing but the sky, and that a man who asked them questions would go deaf. So he played the tune Nina used to hum instead, and at the last chord the bird dropped off the beam and flew out through the open shutter, low over the harbour, towards the grey line of the sea.

Nina came up the lane the next morning with a letter she had not yet opened, its seal already broken by someone else's thumb. Inside was one line in a sailor's careless hand: sempre con voi. Paolo read it aloud. The hall was quiet except for the gulls, and Nina laughed until she had to sit down on the step.