Fine line black tattoo of a small swallow in flight above the script word free, on the upper back beside a grey top.

Swallow and script word free on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A single-needle style tattoo shows a small swallow in flight above the handwritten script word free, with the bird's wing and tail drawn in delicate black lines. The linework is thin and even, and the ink is solid black with no shading or colour. The tattoo sits diagonally across the skin near the shoulder, with a grey t-shirt neckline framing the lower edge and a soft, blurred background.

Fine line Lettering Back Swallow Bird Script Word Free

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marjorie, I have had the ferry timetable folded in my coat for three weeks now, and every time I take it out I find I have not yet decided whether to use it. The swallows came back to the harbour wall on Tuesday, all of them at once, the way they always do, and I stood on the quay thinking of your brother's boat and how he said a bird that turns its back on the sea has forgotten where home is. He was wrong about that, I think. They only forget nothing at all.

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You will want to know about the word. Mr Pryce at the print shop in Tolley Street drew it for me on the back of a bill, the f curling down like a fishing line and the e closing up tight, because he said I could not have a word that loose on my skin and expect it to hold. I told him I wanted it where I could see it in the mirror over the basin, and he laughed and said then I would have to learn to stand up straighter. I have. You would not recognise the way I hold my shoulders now.

The bird is the part I cannot explain. I asked for one bird, one only, flying up out of the last letter as if it had been waiting there for a while. Mr Pryce said it was a sign of good luck to sailors, and I said I had no intention of going to sea. He did not ask me what I intended. He simply inked it thin as a hair and told me to keep still.

I leave on the Thursday boat. Come down to the quay if you can, Marjorie, and if you cannot, I will understand, and I will look for you in the birds anyway.