Unhomely
Ella Jeffery (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
I know why you’ve always slept
with your face to the door.
You’ll grow out of it.
All your life won’t be spent watching
every new house shrug out of itself
the old one insistent
as a blister on the roof
of your mouth. Though I think
I lived in that house too.
I remember: doors all open, third-floor
window unlocked – yes,
that window in your memory
where a bird twinges
on the camphor branch
and the ocean is crawling
somewhere close.
High tide swipes the threshold
of your childhood room. The days
roll in and in and in.
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.
