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Small swallow tattoo at the nape
Neck · Black and grey · Photo
A woman is photographed from behind with her dark brown hair gathered into a bun. A small, solid black swallow in flight sits on the skin at the base of her neck, just above the neckline of her top. The background is a plain light grey, which keeps attention on the tattoo and the nape of the neck.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The swallows came back to the potting shed the same week the lawnmower finally gave up, and I counted them from the water butt like they were a debt someone had promised to repay. Two adults, one forked tail I could pick out without my glasses. Gran always said an early swallow meant a fair summer, though she also said that about every year, so I didn't trust her.
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The shed door had to stay open for the nest, which meant the seed trays went cold and the bindweed moved in. I ran the plot alone that year, kneeling on a folded feed sack beside the leeks and talking to whichever bird was nearest. Mr Okafor from over the road brought round a bag of sweet pea seed and said the birds would leave once the hay came in. He was wrong about the birds, but right about the peas.
By August the nest held three open mouths and then two. I didn't watch the young go. I watched the parents skim low over the cut grass for flies, dropping and rising as if the lawn had been laid out for them. On the last evening of the month, one adult came down onto the path and stayed there, wings half open, waiting for me to move.
I stepped back. It lifted, circled the greenhouse once, and went south over the wall toward the marsh. I left the shed door open all winter, the first thing I had done in a year that felt entirely my own idea.
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