Two black swallows above the words we only part to meet again 5-17-12, set in a small typewriter-style font on the side of the ribs.

Two swallows and a quote on the ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Two solid black swallows in flight sit above three lines of text reading we only part to meet again, then 5-17-12. The swallows are rendered with simple, filled silhouettes, while the lettering uses a thin serif typewriter-style font. The ink is black only, and the skin is photographed at an angle with a loose shirt sleeve in the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows came back to the harbour wall in the second week of April, same as they always had, and Nell counted them from the window of the chandler's loft the way her father had taught her, one for the ship that left and one for the ship that stayed. Her brother Tom had signed on the coaster Marguerite in March. He was nineteen and thought the Bristol Channel was the edge of the world.

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Every evening she walked down to the slipway with a tin of bread crusts and stood where the wind came off the mud. The birds dipped over the water and rose again, forked tails cutting the light. Old Harry from the lifeboat said a swallow would always find its way home across any sea, which was a lie told to children, but she liked it anyway.

On the seventeenth of May the Marguerite's flag showed at the mouth of the river, low in the water and listing a little to port. Nell was already running. Tom came down the gangway with a cut over one eye and a sack of tea on his shoulder, and he laughed at her as though she were the fool.

He had scratched the date into the wheelhouse rail before they sailed, with a line beneath it that the mate had called soft for a deckhand: we only part to meet again. Nell pulled him up the slipway by his collar. Above them the swallows were already stitching the sky shut over the roofs.

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