Two inner wrists showing tattoos of swallows in muted brown and grey, with a nest of eggs beneath the swallow on the left wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow and nest on wrists

Forearm · Colour · Photo

The image shows two inner wrists with palms visible above. The left wrist carries a swallow in flight above a woven nest holding three eggs, and the right wrist carries a smaller swallow in flight. The linework is fine and the shading is soft, with earthy brown, tan and dark blue-grey tones on a light background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The swallows came back to the yard on Tuesday, two of them, going in and out under the eaves above the flue as if they had paid rent. I was out at quarter to four with the first trays, the lamp still hissing over the bench, and I stood in the doorway longer than I should have because one of them dropped straight down past my face with a bit of straw in its beak. Mum would have said it was lucky. Dad would have said it was a nuisance and then gone out with the ladder to see where it had built.

Fair enough, it is a nuisance. The mud they bring in gets on the flour bin lid, and Mrs Okafor from the post office has started complaining about the wrens. But I left the back door propped with the brick anyway, because the nest is up there again, the same cup of mud and grass we found the year you went, and this morning there were three eggs in it, pale as the loaves coming off the peel.

I kept thinking you'd want to know that before anything else. You always asked about the birds first, never the till. So here it is: three eggs, the bread is selling, and I have stopped tipping the sweepings out the back so they have something to pick at.

Come home when the ship's in. The swallows will be heading south soon enough, but they always come back to the same wall, and so does the smell of the ovens.

Your sister, Nell

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