Thorns of Love

Those thorns of love wound
so tightly around
your heart have penetrated
deep into its chambers,
and sharpness abounds.
Muscle and flesh are separated
into bloody serrated
wounds, which have left their marks,
invisible to all but you,
the one who bears the scars.

Kim M. Russell, 17th May 2021

purple cactus

Image by Sarah Wolfe on Unsplash

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille: What’s in a Word

Lillian is back to host our Monday Quadrille, the unique form of poetry created by dVerse: a poem of exactly 44 words, not including the title, which must include a specific word within the body of the poem. Writers may use the exact word or a form of the word, but not a synonym for the word.

This week’s quadrille word is the homograph ‘wound’, which can be pronounced in two different ways, each with its own meaning. To make the prompt a bit tougher today, instead of just using one pronunciation/meaning, we can include the word twice, using both of the meanings/pronunciations and thus including the homographic pair. 

63 thoughts on “Thorns of Love”

  1. Stunning usage of wound as a homographic pair, Kim! I especially resonate with; “Muscle and flesh are separated into bloody serrated wounds, which have left their marks, invisible to all but you.”💝💝

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  4. We both managed to get both words in, and were both thinking of hidden wounds Kim! In fact, this reads like an answer to the poem I wrote, which is quite uncanny.
    ‘Muscle and flesh are separated
    into bloody serrated
    wounds’
    – enjambment works so well here, as it mimics the separation of muscle from flesh in the act of wounding.

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  5. The pairing of the two meanings is so powerful here. Love lost can be truly truly painful and your vivid description depicts it that way….even the loss of a thorny love…one that was not gentle or accepting perhaps, can be so painful….and often, the pain is hidden and only the one who has lost their love knows the pain is still there. Just a stunning juxtapositioning of the two meanings.

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