Black and grey swallow tattoo with swept wings and a curling tail on the upper back, photographed from behind.

Swallow tattoo on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bare back shows a single swallow in flight, placed on the upper back to the side of the spine. The bird is drawn with soft, shaded greys, with feathered wing edges and a long tail that curls into a spiral. The pale skin and dark background frame the tattoo against a close, slightly dim composition.

Back Swallow Bird Wing Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

No, don't bank the fire yet, the story isn't done, and you'll want your hands warm for the end of it. Where was I? Ah, the swallows. They'd all gone south over Cutler's Hill before the beet was lifted, every one except the bird with the long tail that sat on the byre rafter and would not be shifted by a broom. Old Ada Harker's girl, Nell, took to climbing the loft ladder each morning with a heel of bread in her apron pocket, and she talked to that bird the way you'd talk to a lame dog, low and sensible about the weather.

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The frost came early that year. It crept across the midden and stiffened the water in the trough until the cattle stood with their heads down, and the swallow's tail, which had been a plain fork, began to curl under the cold like a bracken frond. Nell said it was trying to hold its own warmth in. One night the snow was deep enough to bury the gatepost, and in the morning she found the bird on the kitchen sill, wings spread out against the glass as if it meant to climb through to the stove.

She carried it out in her two hands and set it on the wind. It did not go south. It rose over the lane, circled the church tower three times, the spiral of its tail drawn in the grey air like a pen stroke, and then it came slowly back down and settled on the gate where her mother hung the lantern. Nell swore afterwards she heard it laugh, though I have my doubts about that bit.

So when the first swallow comes back over the lane in April, you'll hear my father say it's that same bird, come to fetch the crust it was owed. Some years I believe him. Mind the step on your way out, and take the lantern. The snow's still deep past the gate.