Two forearms with full traditional sleeve tattoos of roses, a swallow, stars and Chinese characters, held palms up towards the camera.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional rose and swallow sleeves on both forearms

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

Both forearms are covered in bold traditional tattoos showing yellow and pink roses, a green swallow, a red dragon-like bird, stars and Chinese characters. The linework is dark and heavy with solid colour fills and little shading. The arms are held palms up in front of a dark green top and a patterned skirt, with the sleeves filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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The apples came in early this year, and Mam has stopped pretending she can reach the top rungs of the ladder. Your swallows are back under the barn eaves, three pairs at least, flicking through the orchard rows like someone shaking out a green wool blanket. I counted them on Sunday after chapel, the way you used to count the Bramleys before anyone was allowed to pick. Forty-one on the wire. I know you will say I was guessing.

The man from Ashford who sells the grafting knives came by again. He asked after you and I said you were in Valparaiso, which is what the postcard said, though the postmark was smudged and I could not swear to it. He looked at the rose I'd sketched on the back of his invoice and said I drew like someone who had been told not to. I did not tell him I had copied it from the old roses your father trained up the south wall, the yellow ones and the pink, or that the red bird beside them is the one you painted on the paraffin lamp when you were nine.

The letter from the shipping office came on Thursday. It says the Maren Lowe is due in Dover by the end of the month, and that a crewman's effects will be held until someone claims them. I have not decided whether I am the someone. I have been walking the rows in the evenings with the dog, touching the bark where you carved your initials into the cider tree, and thinking that a swallow never stays through the winter, yet it always comes back to the same barn.

I'll leave the back gate unlatched. Come home before the frost takes the last windfalls.

Love, Nell

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