Traditional style swallow tattoo with a pink flower and leaf sprig in its beak, on the side of a person's torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Swallow with flower and leaf sprig

Traditional · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A swallow in flight is the central subject, with a dark blue-black head and wings, a red throat and a brown and yellow tail. A pink flower with a yellow centre and yellow-green leaves sits above it, with a small scroll-like curl beside the bloom. Bold black outlines and flat, solid fills in red, pink, yellow and brown are typical of traditional flash work, and the design is shown against bare skin.

Traditional Ribs Swallow Bird Flower Leaf Sprig Scroll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The 7.42 is running forty minutes late, so I have the bench on platform four to myself and a stub of pencil borrowed from the ticket clerk, who said I could keep it if I promised to bring it back. The swallows have been nesting under the canopy since April. Mr Hale says they return to the same eaves every year, which is more than I can say for anyone in this family.

Mum hasn't stopped crying since Tuesday, though she says it is the coal smoke. I told her you would write as soon as the ship docked at Tilbury, and she made me promise to post a letter the same day. So this is the first of them, and I am using the paper with the little bird printed in the corner because you always liked that one.

Yesterday one of the swallows came down onto the rail with a sprig of something green in its beak, a bit of rosemary from the bed by the signal box. It sat there looking at me as if it had been sent with a message. I thought of you going off across the water with your bag over your shoulder, not once looking back, the way you do.

Here is what I wanted to say. The bird flies south each autumn and nobody thinks it has deserted anyone. It just knows where the eaves are. Press the rosemary into your book, and when the swallows come back to the station in spring, I will be on this bench waiting.

Your loving sister, Ada