Colour tattoo of a swallow among pink cherry blossom branches with the word Nanny in black script, shown in two close photos on a leg.

Swallow and cherry blossom with script on a leg

Traditional · Other · Colour · Photo

A collage with a tube of body gel on the left and two close photos of the same tattoo on the right. The design shows a swallow in flight among pink cherry blossom branches, with the word Nanny in black script beneath. The linework is dark and defined, with soft shading and pink, red and blue-green colour in the blossoms and bird.

Traditional Other Swallow Cherry blossom Script Lettering Bird Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the swallow before anyone else does, because it is the only thing on the platform at Kingsholm Junction still moving at that hour. It goes in and out under the iron canopy, stitching through the orange light, while the pigeons ignore it the way the night staff ignore everybody.

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Your nanny always said a swallow under a roof brings luck to the house. She said it the summer she was certain the lodger was siphoning gas from the meter. She kept a jar of cherry blossom syrup beside the kettle, pink as a fishing float, and she would tip it over ice for anyone who sat still long enough. You never sat still. You were always halfway out the back door, listening for the next train to be announced from the other side of the estate.

Tonight the last one has gone and the departures board has nothing left to say. You stand where the tracks curve into the dark and listen for wings, which sound like someone folding a letter very fast. The bird drops past your shoulder and rises into the cherry tree in the planter by the ticket office, the one the council has watered for six years without a single bloom.

Except it has flowered. Pink on the top branch, paler lower down, and the swallow sits among it with its tail forked like a pair of scissors. You take your phone out to show her, the way you used to show her everything, and remember that the call will not connect. So you stand under the lamps saying her name out loud to nobody, until the bird lifts off and the tree goes still again.