Black and grey photo of two flying bird silhouettes above the script words Always on my mind and Forever in my heart, tattooed on a forearm in a fine line lettering style.

Two birds and script quote on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two solid black bird silhouettes in flight, one above and to the left of the other, with two lines of cursive script beneath them reading Always on my mind and Forever in my heart. The script uses fine, even linework in black ink, while the birds are filled in with heavier, textured black shading. The black and grey photograph is taken close up and at an angle across the inside of the forearm, with the lettering running diagonally across the skin.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Bird Swallow Script Lettering Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had stopped counting the swallows over the harbour wall once there were only two left. They dipped and cut above the nets every evening, one a little ahead of the other, and she told herself they were the pair that had nested in the boathouse eaves the summer Harold sailed for Lerwick. Her son said the birds were just birds, and that the boat had come back half-empty, and that was the end of it. Nell did not argue with him. She had learnt that some things were easier to watch than to explain.

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The card turned up in the drawer of the chandlery in February, behind a tin of tacks. Harold's hand was small and slanted, the way it went when he was pleased with himself. On the back, in pencil, he had copied out a line from the hymn they sang at the Mission, and underneath it he had written her name and nothing else. Always on my mind, forever in my heart. She had read it so often that the crease had gone soft as cloth.

She walked down to the boathouse that Thursday with the tide tables under her arm. The nest was empty, the mud cup cracked along one side, and a single grey feather lay on the sill where the light fell. She sat on the upturned creel and wrote her reply on the back of the tables, though the words came out plainer than she meant. Come home before the swallows go. The sea is quiet without you.

She folded the paper small and slid it under the loose board where Harold had always kept his knife. Out past the wall the two birds banked low over the water, one slightly ahead, the other keeping its line. She watched them until the light went, and then, for the first time since the summer, she went in and left the door unlatched.