Two black and grey traditional swallow tattoos on the inner wrists, one larger than the other, with a checkered floor in the background.

Two swallows on inner wrists

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two swallows in flight are tattooed on the inner wrists, one smaller and placed higher on the arm, the other larger and lower on the wrist. The birds have bold dark outlines, solid black wing feathers and soft grey shading on the bodies. The photo is a phone shot with a black and white checkered floor behind, and the tattoos fill most of the frame.

Traditional Forearm Swallow Bird Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dessie drove the van with one hand on the wheel and the other hanging out of the window, fingers open to the hot air as if the desert were a kind of water. We had been on the road two days with no name, only a white line and a sign reading FUEL 140 KM. The sand had gone the colour of weak tea, and I counted telegraph poles to keep from talking.

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Past a dry salt lake, swallows came up off the verge in a flock, low and fast, racing the bonnet. Dessie said his nan always read that as rain coming, or a house nearby that would feed you. Neither was true out there. The birds kept pace for a mile, dipping and banking, and then two of them split from the rest, one a little smaller than the other. They dropped level with the windscreen and skimmed alongside as though they had a reservation.

We stopped at a tank with a cracked trough. Dessie filled a tin cup and held it out. The smaller swallow hopped to the rim and drank, quick as a stitch, while the bigger one wheeled overhead. I said it looked like they had come to check on us. He didn't answer. He only watched the pair of them the way you check a map you have already memorised.

When we climbed back in, the birds were gone and the road ran on, straight as a rule. Dessie kept his hand out of the window a long time after that, not for the cool, just to feel the air move past his fingers. I didn't tell him that swallows always find their way home. He already knew it.