Fine line grey tattoo of three swallows in flight on a person's upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three swallows on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

Three swallows in flight are drawn in delicate grey linework across the upper back, with their wings spread and tails forked. The shading is light and sparse, so the birds appear mostly as outlines against the skin. The composition is diagonal, with the birds spaced out from the shoulder blade towards the spine, and a thin white strap runs down the frame beside them.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth, the boat came in at four this morning and the swallows were already back under the eaves of the net shed, so I knew the season had turned without anyone telling me. Your father would have laughed at me standing in the yard in my wellingtons counting birds like a schoolmaster. Three of them, sitting on the wire above the slipway, tails forked like the stitching on his old waistcoat, and not one of them looking at me.

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I found your letter in the tin with the spare fuses. I'm sorry it sat there so long. You were right about the sale of the cottage; I've signed nothing yet, and I won't until you've seen the survey, though Mr Tallis says the roof will not last another winter without new slates and I have no notion where the money for slates is going to come from. The lighthouse keeper's boy has been up there twice this week, doing what I cannot, which is climb.

What I wanted to tell you is that the birds leave the island in a rush, all at once, the way a shoal turns. You never see them go. You only come out one morning and the wire is bare. I think that is why your father always said to look for the first one in spring and the last one in autumn, because the rest are only there when you are not watching.

Come at Easter if you can. Bring the grey jumper. The wind here doesn't care what month it is.

All my love, Mum

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