Traditional style swallow tattoo with red flowers on the upper arm, shown in black, grey, blue and red ink.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow and red flowers on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A swallow in flight is the central subject, with a grey and black body, a red breast and blue-edged wings, outlined in bold black lines. Two red five-petal flowers with yellow centres and dark green leaves sit behind and below the bird. The shading is solid and smooth, and the bird fills most of the frame against pale skin, with a checked shirt sleeve at the right edge.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow came down on the galley rail just as Dorrie Vance tipped the potato peelings over the side, and it sat there with its tail split like a pair of tailor's shears, too tired to lift its head. The Calder Star had been eleven days out of Cardiff with nothing but grey water and grey sky, and the men had stopped talking about anything but their wages.

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Dorrie had been at sea long enough to know the old saying. A swallow that crosses open water is near land, the bosun swore, and a day or two at most. She didn't believe much of what the bosun said, but she broke a corner off the ship's loaf and set it on the sill beside the geranium tin she'd bought at the Bute Street market for her sister's grave. The bird hopped down, pecked, and stayed. It ticked along the brass rail under the lamp all through the middle watch while Ned the stoker told it, loudly, that it was a fool to travel without a ticket.

At dawn the fog lifted in one long breath and the smell reached them before the coast did: pine resin, wet stone, turned earth. Off the bow a red-sailed fishing boat was coming out to meet them. The swallow was gone from the rail, but when Dorrie went to water the geraniums she found two petals had opened in the night that had been shut at dusk, bright as the bird's throat. She put the kettle on for the first time since Cardiff and didn't tell the bosun he'd been right.

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