Black and grey photo of a small solid black swallow tattoo at the base of the neck, with the wearer's hair tied up and their back turned to the camera.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small swallow tattoo at the nape

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small solid black swallow in flight sits at the base of the neck, seen from behind with the hair tied up. The bird is rendered as a simple filled silhouette with a forked tail and angled wings, with no shading or fine detail. The photograph is black and white, with soft lighting and a dark background that keeps the focus on the tattoo.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The swallows have started gathering on the telegraph wire above the lower orchard, forty or more of them, shuffling along the cable like beads on a string someone keeps meaning to thread. Your gran would have counted them every evening in August and told me the number was a sign of something, rain or a good price for the plums, depending on her mood. I count them too now. Thirty-eight this morning. Thirty-nine by teatime, when the Cox's were picked and the ladders were stacked against the shed.

The pickers have gone home and the wasps have taken over the windfalls under the Bramleys. Dad's old tractor still ticks in the yard when the sun comes round. You asked in your last letter whether I'd sold the shed. I haven't. The martins built in the eaves again, and the swallows came back to the same beam over the door they've used since before you were born, mud cups stuck to the rafters like something a child might make out of clay for a jar.

One bird hasn't left with the others. It's the smallest of the nest, the one that stands on the wire with its tail split like a pair of scissors, and it has been sitting on the gate post for three days now, watching the rest go up in twos and threes over the hedge. I went down with a bowl of water this morning and it didn't fly off. It only turned its head, the way you used to when I called you in from the paddock and you were pretending not to hear.

I've left the shed door propped open. If it wants to go, it knows the way.

Love, Grandad

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