Black and grey shaded swallow in flight tattooed on the side of the ribcage.

Swallow in flight on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small swallow with outstretched, forked wings is tattooed on the side of the torso. The bird is rendered with soft grey shading across its body and wings, with darker black tones along the wing edges and tail. The tattoo sits centrally in the frame against plain skin, with grey fabric visible at the top of the image.

Ribs Swallow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Every spring the swallows came back to Harrowby Junction and nested under the iron canopy of platform two. Every spring the station master, Tobias Greer, swept their droppings off the benches, grumbled at them, and left the nests alone. His daughter Nell fed the young birds crumbs from her coat pocket when her father was looking the other way.

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The year the line was to close, the last train was due on a wet Friday in October. Nell found a fledgling on the cinders beside the down line, fallen from its nest in the rain. She carried it in her cupped hands to the signal box, where her father was writing the final timetable in ink. He told her the bird had a mother, and the mother would find it. Nell said the mother could not find anything in this rain. So they sat with it under the lamp while the clock ticked toward eleven.

When the last train came through, its brakes shrieking, the swallows rose from the canopy all at once and wheeled above the carriages like a handful of thrown ash. The driver leaned out and laughed at the child holding a bird in the dark. Nell opened her hands. The fledgling stayed still for a moment, then dropped, caught the air, and flew low down the line after the red tail lamp.

Next morning the station was empty and the signals were set to danger for good. Tobias found one grey feather lying on the sleeper nearest the box, and he kept it in the timetable book, where it stayed for the rest of his life.