Ink Under Fingernails

Ink Under Fingernails

My hands confess what pages hide—black half-moons, stubborn trails;

The honest proof of midnight work: ink under fingernails.

I scratch the silence into shape; I sand the sentence rails,

I oil the hinges of a thought until the latch unfails.

¤

The coffee cools, the window fogs, a taxi coughs and pales;

I stitch the blue from city lights through grammar’s windy veils.

A verb rebels—its collar stiff; a metaphor exhales—

I loosen buttons on its throat with ink under my nails.

¤

I learned that polish isn’t the truth; that shine sometimes derails.

That making clean can rinse away the storm a heart entails.

So let the margins smudge a bit; let typos leave their trails—

They’re footprints out of darker rooms, not careless, but details.

¤

Your name arrives and skews the line; the compass briefly fails,

But south can still mean home again when steady habit sails.

I map the bruise, I bless the seam, I mend the torn travails,

and sign the day in lowercase with ink beneath my nails.

¤

If morning wants a tidy hand, if daylight counts and scales,

I’ll bring the rough, the real, the grit—my pocket full of gales.

For every truth that had to fight, for every voice that quails,

I’ll show the work, the weathered love, and the ink under my nails.