Working From Home
Ella Jeffery (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
A few hours at the window
eyeing a lake-coloured kite
as it slopes up into air
and comes pleating back
on its invisible leash. I lap
through some book or other,
leave the pages open
to measure the depth I’ve reached.
Books piled like saucepans
on benchtops, cat-balanced
on an edge of lounge. The pale
ceilings invite silence.
Sometimes I sift
the kitchen cupboards
and cutlery hums as I pull
it from the drawer.
A pen slips in my fingers
like a small silver fish.
Until I’m alone,
none of it is clear:
each wall’s beige weight
moving me where it must, my gauzy
body, the empty glass
of my voice
rolling through the rooms.
Ella Jeffery is a writer, editor and PhD candidate at QUT in Brisbane. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Westerly, foam:e, Tincture and elsewhere. Her practice-led doctoral research examines representations of uncanny and incomplete domestic spaces in contemporary Australian poetry.