Black and grey fine line swallow tattoo on the ankle of a man wearing grey trousers and black brogues.

Swallow tattoo on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A man in grey trousers with turned-up cuffs and black brogues holds his lower leg with one hand. A small swallow in black linework with light grey shading sits on the ankle above the shoe. The plain pale background keeps attention on the tattoo.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow came in through the loading door on the third Tuesday of April, while Mr Okonedo was still wheeling the proving racks in from the yard and I was scraping burnt sugar off the big tray. It flew three slow circles under the strip lights, then dropped onto the rim of the flour bin as if it had booked the table.

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Dad used to say swallows came back to the same eaves every year, and you could set your watch by them. I told him that was for cuckoos. He said cuckoos had no sense of shame. The vent above the cooling rack had held a nest for as long as the bakery had stood on that corner, and when he went into hospital in March with his chest, I told myself I would deal with the straw and mud later. Later had not come.

At ten to four I propped the back door open with a sack of semolina and tried to shoo the bird toward the cold air. It ignored me, flicked up into the rafters and came down again, straight at the vent. I stood on an upturned crate with a tea towel in my fist, feeling a fool, until I saw what it was carrying: a beakful of mud, then a sprig of dry grass, then it was gone into the dark of the duct.

I left it alone. I lit the deck oven and shaped the first tins by hand, the way he had taught me, and when the window over the sink turned from black to the colour of weak milk, the swallow came out, swung once over the car park, and went back in again. I kept the door open for the warmth and let the morning come in.

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