Black and teal fine script quote with swallows, swirls and a purple and teal butterfly tattooed across a person's upper back.

Swallows, swirls and script quote on upper back

Lettering · Back · Mixed · Photo

A tattoo across the upper back shows three swallows in flight, a butterfly with teal and purple wings, and flowing black swirl linework. Lines of cursive script read as a quote running down the centre of the design. The ink is mostly black with teal and purple accents on the butterfly and swirls, and the design fills the shoulder blade area.

Lettering Back Swallow Bird Butterfly Swirl Script Quote Wing

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows came back to the eaves above Ward 9 the same week the agency nurses started, which Sister Okafor said was no coincidence, only birds being sensible. I had the late run that spring, and between obs rounds I'd stand at the window over the sluice room and watch them stitch the car park's orange light with their forked tails.

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Mrs Pryce in bay three kept a notebook of lines she'd overheard on the radio and copied out in pencil, her handwriting leaning like a fence in wind. She asked me what the birds were doing every night, and every night I told her the same thing, that they were looking for something to eat in the dark. She tapped the page and said people carried far more than they let on, that you could never read a person's whole story from the front of them. Behind her smile, she said, there's a library nobody's ever been allowed into.

On the last night of April she didn't press the bell. When I did the four o'clock round, the window was open a hand's width and the curtain was moving slowly, as if someone had just left the room. Her notebook was on the locker, open at a fresh page where she'd written two lines in capitals, the pencil pressed so hard it had torn the paper. I copied them into my own pocket book before the day team came on, and I still have them: with brave wings, she flies.

The next night the swallows were back on the wire outside, three of them, chattering over the bins, and I found I didn't mind the sound at all.