A traditional-style swallow flash design in red, black and white on a light blue background, shown inside a metal circular badge.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional swallow flash in a round badge

Traditional · Colour · Flash

A red swallow dives diagonally across the frame with its wings swept up in black with white highlights. The bold outlines and flat fills are typical of American traditional flash, with yellow shading on the lower wing and body. The bird sits on a plain light blue circle within a silver metal rim.

Traditional Swallow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallow has been coming in through the top sash of the post office all week, and Mr Pryce swears it will drop something on the telegram forms before the summer is out. You don't tell him that you have stopped minding. You are at the counter with the pencil behind your ear, counting the wires that run down Harbour Street the way you have counted everything since March, when the Ellen Mary went out past the breakwater and the tide came back in without her.

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Outside, the bird goes over the cobbles so low you hear the air tear behind it. It is red as a pillar box, with black wings swept back and pale stripes along the feathers, as if someone drew the ink lines with a knife on purpose. It drops, catches itself, and drops again, as though it has been falling for years and has only just noticed the ground. Mrs Oakes from the chapel says swallows always find their way back to the same eaves. Her husband's people had the same nest for three generations, she says, and nobody ever had to write a letter about it.

At half past four the boy from the cable office rides up on his red bicycle, and you sign for the envelope before he can say your name. The paper is thin and the words are few. ARRIVING THURSDAY STOP BRING YOUR GOOD COAT STOP. You read it twice, then a third time, slowly, while the swallow hangs above the cable pole outside as if it is waiting to see what you will do.

You go out without your hat. The bird peels away over the harbour wall, down toward the grey water and the empty moorings, and you run after it in your work shoes, the telegram crumpling in your fist, calling a name the gulls have already drowned out.