Black Nails

Poetry

Photo credit @__y_818__

There’s a sting down your back, a gentle caress on your arm, running over every scar and rounding your bottom lip. There’s the way they dance with the pounding of your heart, how they fly over the keyboard, hold the coffee in the morning and read books at night. Tell me, do these black nails fascinate you?

© Sarah Doughty

34 thoughts on “Black Nails”

  2. i love this. after many mornins and nights together she still can’t tell there is a difference between nails and finger/palm. nails inflict pain – that’s i think the author cleverly starts her diatribe with, “there’s a sting down your back.” put the key words together and you get a woman who inflicts pain, while maintaining a distance: ‘sting’, ‘scar’, ‘pounding of your heart,’ (out of fear maybe?), ‘fly over the keyboard’, ‘hold coffee in the morning’ and ‘read books at night.’ this woman is more cerebral than sensual. the black nails are just an outward manifestation of this. brilliant post.

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    1. You get me. 😊 😊 Though the sting and pounding was in reference to the sensuality… But you’ve got it. There’s both pleasure in distance and up close, so it is more of a cerebral manifestation than anything else.

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  4. Well, poetry is far more expressive than fiction in my understanding. Emotion? That’s advertising nonsense, mind control manipulation for useless monetary units. Poetry conveys ideas in curt, dramatic, memorizable form and predates the written word by millenia in the very least. This modern understanding of “making” as is the definition of “poetry” in Greek is weirdly disinforming. You make words to convey a thought. Your thought is that you want to scratch my back? I’ll drop you a line if it itches, k? You should memorize some poems, like I do a lot, at least by listening to songs I like endlessly, as I am doing now for Ride “Vapour Trail” but then a one-track mind like my own needs practice in diverse activity, as I read in Takuan Soho before dawn this morn. Peace beautiful friend.

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    2. Poetry has been around for a long time, but I think it has helped me with my fiction, helping me to bring out the thoughts and messages more clearly, as poetry should. I left this one open for interpretation on purpose. It wasn’t about scratching someone’s back for the sake of stopping an itch. The goal was to paint enough of a picture that a person could visualize what those fingers and nails were doing, and how they were doing them, depending on the situation. I’ve read many poems, both literary greats from history and modern, I read just as much if not more than I write. That’s the key in growing and evolving your writing. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts. 😊

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  11. You have such an amazing way with words! This was both frightening and sensual (maybe frighteningly sensual). Again, I feel like you’ve packed so much into this small space. Two or three different ways to read this and at least as many stories lurking beneath the surface. Thank you!

    Liked by 2 people

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