Small black fine line tattoo of three swallows in flight on the inner wrist, with pastel nails and a silver bracelet.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three swallows on a wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is held up towards the camera, showing a small tattoo of three black swallows in flight on the inner wrist. The birds are drawn with simple, thin black linework and little or no shading, and they are spaced in a loose diagonal. The background is blurred green foliage, and the nails are painted in mint, lavender and blue.

Fine line Forearm Swallow Bird Flight Hand Wrist Nail Bracelet Chain

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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 band at the Pavilion has run through the same waltz four times, and you are still holding the half of the ticket Mr Aske tore at the door. Out past the glass the promenade lamps are coming on one by one, and the sea has gone the colour of wet slate. Your sister Ada says the swallows nested under the Pavilion eaves again this year, three pairs, which is more than the council wanted. She says it like a grievance. You say nothing, because you have been watching the sky over the bandstand since June and you know they have been leaving in small groups, always by the same slant north-east over the chimneys, as if someone had drawn them a road.

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Then Tom Pell crosses the floor in his demob suit, asks for the last dance, and does not say the thing he came to say. You dance anyway. His hand is careful at your back, the way it was on the pier in August, and the trumpet bends a note that goes on far too long. Ada watches from the cloakroom with her arms folded, pretending she is not.

When you step outside after, the air smells of tar and frying onions. Three swallows are working the air above the lamp, dipping low over the car park and rising again, unwilling to commit to going. You stand with your coat open and count them. Three, then a fourth you were sure was not there, then the sky turns blue-black and they are gone over the roofs.

Tom lights two cigarettes and hands you one without asking. Neither of you mentions the train on Thursday. Behind you the band starts up again, the same waltz, and you think of the birds, who never once look back at the hall before they leave.