Two matching black swallow tattoos with cursive script reading Follow your heart and Never look back, placed on the forearms of two people side by side.

Two swallows and script on forearms

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two matching black swallows in flight sit above two lines of cursive script on the inner forearms of two people placed side by side. The birds are solid black silhouettes, and the lettering is drawn in smooth, even black linework. The image is entirely black ink on skin, with a black cord bracelet and a small butterfly charm visible at the lower edge.

Lettering Forearm Swallow Bird Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The swallows found the ship two days out from Liverpool, when the Mersey was nothing but a grey smudge astern and the deck still smelled of tar and wet hemp. Mr Gallagher, the bosun, swore they had lost their way and flapped his cap at them from the rigging. They would not be shifted. A pair of them settled on the forestay, one with a notched tail, and stared down at you as though you owed them money.

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The old hands said a swallow aboard meant the ship would make port and bring her men home, provided nobody turned round to watch the shore go. You thought that was the sort of thing men said to keep the watch awake. Then the squall came off the Bay of Biscay and the birds vanished in the night, and the cook's boy swore he had seen them dive into the spray the way they dive into a field at dusk. Nobody could say whether that was true. By dawn the ship was limping under a patched foresail, and the swallows were back, sitting on the wet capstan as if they had only stepped out for tea.

The turn came in Valparaíso, where the ship put in for water and half the crew went ashore with their pay in their pockets. You stood on the quay with your sea bag, the wind off the hills smelling of dust and salt, and you heard the wings before you saw them. The pair circled the harbour once, high and easy, and every instinct in you wanted to look back at the ship, the crew, the years of rope and ration. Gallagher's voice came to you across the years: keep your eyes on the harbour mouth. So you did, and the two birds wheeled off over the hills without a backward glance of their own.