Black lettering tattoo of two swallows in flight above the words we only part to meet again 5-17-12, in a typewriter-style font on skin.

Two swallows above a quote and date

Lettering · Black and grey · Photo

Two solid black swallow silhouettes in flight sit above a three-line quote, we only part to meet again, with the date 5-17-12 beneath it. The swallows are filled with dark ink and the lettering is a clean, serif typewriter-style font in black. The image is a close, straight-on shot on pale skin with the design centred and fully in frame.

Lettering Swallow Bird Quote Date

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dorothy Pask had been pruning the same rose since breakfast, and her son still hadn't come down from the loft. "Leave the ladder where it is, Tom," she called up through the open hatch of the potting shed. "The swallows will be back for it soon enough."

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He came down anyway, dusting straw from his jumper. The nest sat above the door, a mud cup stuck to the beam, and the pair who had built it were already circling over the lawn, dipping low past the washing line as if they had somewhere better to be. Tom had a letter in his pocket, the kind with a Liverpool postmark and a ship's name typed across the top. He'd read it four times.

"They always go south in the autumn," his mother said. "Every year they come back to the same beam. Your dad used to say they never forget a door." Tom pulled the letter out and smoothed it against the wall. Sailing on the fifth, it said, and nothing about when she'd be back. He had written the date on the back of his hand in biro, the way his father used to mark seed packets, and the ink had smudged in the rain.

"Then I'll leave the door open," she said, and went back to her roses without looking up, because some things were easier said to the bushes.