Small black and grey swallow tattoo in flight on a person's ribs, seen through the open armhole of a dark sleeveless top.

Swallow in flight on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small swallow with outstretched wings is shown in flight on the side of the torso, just below the arm. The bird is drawn with fine feathered detail and soft grey shading, with the wings sweeping upwards and the body angled towards the lower right. The ink is entirely black and grey against warm skin, and the dark top frames the tattoo in the composition.

Ribs Swallow Bird Wing Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows had been gathering on the telegraph wire since the Tuesday, forty or fifty of them shuffling along the line like people waiting for a bus that never comes. Grandad said they were working up the nerve. Mags said they were discussing the weather. She was twelve and had an opinion about everything that flew, and in the end it was one swallow that settled the matter, dropping off the wire into the orchard and skimming low under the netting strung over the early rows to keep the wasps off the windfalls.

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She found it at ten past six, one wing hitched in a loop of green mesh, its small dark head turning towards her as though she were the one with the questions. She knelt in the wet grass with Grandad's penknife, which she was not supposed to have, and cut the mesh one thread at a time while the bird held very still and watched her hands. The sun came over the Blenheim trees and the dew went gold on everything.

When the last thread gave, the swallow sat in her palm for the count of three, its rust-coloured throat pulsing, and then it was off over the perry pears towards the church tower. Grandad leaned on the gate with his cup of tea and said they would be back at the barn in April, same rafter, same mud, as if he had arranged it personally with the birds.

Mags stayed on her knees a long while after the wire had emptied. There was a single grey feather caught in the mesh, and she worked it free and tucked it behind her ear, where it stayed all the way up the lane to the house.