Small black swallow tattoo with patterned wing fills on the upper shoulder near the collarbone, in a traditional style.

Small swallow tattoo on a shoulder

Traditional · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A small swallow in flight is tattooed on the upper shoulder near the collarbone, shown in black ink. The wings and tail carry decorative patterned fills and the body has a dotted, shaded underside, while the outlines are bold and clean. The photograph is taken from behind and above, with the wearer's hair and a white off-shoulder top framing the design.

Traditional Shoulder Swallow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had come in over the car park at ten past eleven, and Dorota Vance, who sold mended umbrellas from a trestle at the back of Carrow Street market, was already counting the tarpaulins. Swallows were skimming the wet tin roofs above the fishmonger's, low and quick, the way they only flew before weather. Her father used to say they knew the price of bread better than the council did.

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A boy in a yellow cagoule stopped at her stall and asked whether the black one with the bent spoke could be fixed. She turned it over in her hands, felt the rib give, and told him she could have it back by Friday for four pounds. He counted out coins from a sandwich bag, one at a time, pennies first, while the rain drummed on the awning and ran in a bright seam off its edge.

When he had gone, she found a folded square of paper tucked under the spare canopy, printed with a pattern of swirls like the fills on an old biscuit tin. Inside, in her father's square capitals, were the words: GO LOW IN THE WET. Her hands went still. He had died in March, and the stall had been hers since, but she had never found anything of his left in the stock.

She looked up. Two swallows had settled on the guttering above the fishmonger's, tails forked and dripping, watching the street as if it owed them money. Dorota folded the paper into her pocket, took down the kettle, and for the first time that week did not hurry the afternoon.