Colour and black-and-grey tattoo on a person's back showing a swallow in flight between three red poppies, with birds and ink splashes above.

Swallow and red poppies down a back

Botanical · Back · Mixed · Photo

A swallow in flight sits at the centre of a tattoo that runs down the spine, flanked by three red poppies on stems. The swallow is shaded in soft greys and black, while the poppies are rendered in rich reds with darker shadowing. Loose black brushstrokes, ink splashes and small flying birds across the upper back frame the composition.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marta,

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The big top came down on Tuesday in Shrewsbury, and I have been sitting on the caravan step ever since, trying to decide whether to write this as a complaint or a confession. Mr Ferrante sold the last of the rigging to a scrap man from Telford. He kept the lions' van, which is at least something, though the lions went to a wildlife park in Wales in March. What is left is us: eleven people, two ponies and a swallow.

The swallow arrived in May, the week the ticket money stopped covering diesel. It flew in under the flap of the ring curtain and would not leave. It built a mud cup in the rafters above the trapeze rigging and fed its chicks on gnats from the horse stalls. Ernesto wanted to shoo it out. I told him that a bird who picks the one crumbling show in England to raise a family in has earned a seat on the payroll.

Yesterday I walked out along the Ludlow road, where the farmers leave the verges for the poppies. Red everywhere, papery and loud, the petals already shedding onto the tarmac. I thought of you on the high wire in Brighton all those summers ago, when the sky behind you was the colour of wet slate and the crowd forgot to breathe. I stood in the ditch and cried like a fool.

The swallow is still in the rafters. The tent is gone, but the bird has not noticed. Come and see her before the field is mown. I will leave the caravan door open.

Love, Ida

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