Two traditional-style swallow tattoos in red, yellow and blue sit either side of the upper back of a person wearing a sheer, polka-dot blue dress.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two traditional swallows on a back

Traditional · Back · Colour · Photo

Two swallows in flight are tattooed on the upper back, one on each side of the spine, with bold black outlines and flat areas of red, yellow and blue. The birds are shown in a near mirror image, with their wings raised and their tails angled downward. The photograph is taken from behind, and the sheer polka-dot dress with puff sleeves frames the tattoos against soft, natural daylight.

Traditional Back Swallow Bird Dress

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourselves down, the kettle's only just gone, and mind the cat on that chair. You'll want to hear how the reunion went at Ashcombe Infants, the one where Maud Pellow and Irene Tacy stood by the coat pegs and hadn't spoken since the summer of the fire at the mill. Nobody thought they'd come. Nobody thought they'd stay.

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Now, swallows don't much care for grudges. Every April two of them came back to the same rafter in Farrer's barn, one for each girl, as if someone had sent word where to go. Maud swore it was the same pair as the year before. Irene said swallows only remember the way, not the quarrel. Both of them were right, which is the trouble with women of that age.

The hall smelt of squash and floor polish. A dance band record was playing on the headmistress's old gramophone, sticking every few bars. Irene walked the length of the room with a paper cup in each hand and set one down by Maud's elbow without looking at her. Maud said, "You've always been too sweet with the squash," and Irene said, "And you've always been too sharp with the truth," and that was the whole of the apology, and it was plenty.

They went out to the car park at half past nine and stood under the one lamp that worked. Above them a pair of swallows was circling the gutter of the old bell tower, red throats flashing, yellow bellies catching the light. Neither woman said a word. They watched the birds dive, climb and dive again until the lamp began to hum and the swallows were lost in the dark over the playing field, and that, my loves, is the end of it.