Fluff

Milling about the city’s nightlife,

she threads through the quilted crowd

who rug themselves up, flattering

each others’ leathers and wispy flair.

She stands on the fringe like a lost

strand of hair listening to the needles,

the knit-knot words, the pinning-up of

phrases — cottoning on to their lingo.

She’s ready to be brushed aside

when some guy’s quip poufs her up

like a pillow, and she responds by

chewing a ball of fluff because, for

some fuzzy reason, she wants his hide.

sewing what’s left of her heart to

her sleeve — a threadbare cliché that

his quiff-like puns pierce like

a pin-cushion. With conversation

wearing thin, his hand reaching for

her velvet, she remembers the lint

piling up in the corners of her

apartment; the frayed curtains she’s

never closed on her view of the city.

She can see it now from her bedroom

window: the silhouetted skyline, a

tattered hem; the stars, little white

cross-stitches forming a sky of blind

eyes; and rolling over Centrepoint,

the moon, a silver ball of wool,

unravelling.

(previously published on the Red Room, 2010, and

in Best Australian Poems 2011, ed. John Tranter)