Black and grey swallow tattoo with dotted shading on the inner forearm, above a silver and turquoise bracelet, with rocks and sea behind.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow tattoo on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single swallow in flight is tattooed on the forearm, drawn as a dark silhouette with stippled dot shading across the wings and a sharp, pointed tail. The ink is black and grey, set against smooth skin, with the wrist and hand partly visible below. The background shows rough rock and blurred sea water, and the tattoo sits in the upper left of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow came in off the harbour wall at dusk, low over the green water, and Tomas swore it had been waiting for the lamps to light so it could find its way home. We were three days out from Rhodes with a hold full of oranges that had started to sweat, and the cook had already put money on who would be sick first. I was on the bow with a bucket of tar and a bad temper when the bird landed on the rail beside my elbow, folded its wings like a tailor closing a pair of shears, and looked at me with one black eye.

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Nobody aboard believed a swallow could cross open sea, but Tomas said they could, that they slept on the wing and drank rain off their own feathers. I didn't argue. I only noticed that the bird kept to the lee side of the mainsail all night, and that when the squall came up out of the south at two bells it went up into the rigging and stayed there, sheltered, until the sky broke open on the far side.

By morning the oranges were ruined and the cook had lost his shilling, but the swallow was still on the rail, preening. Tomas gave it a crust. I watched it lift off and go straight towards the land we had not yet seen, a dark cut against the grey, and I understood that it had never needed us to find the way at all.

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