Stitching on the Kang quilt
All the stitching
gathers
first
along the mattress
needle
I stitch in
memories think grey points
stood with my sister
by the Chinese boats
where shark fins dry at the Quay
near the Opera House
when I was just a kid
tension loomed yet
is all the same required
bunched pulled flat
drawing with a steel
finger
one tale all the years to make
I tuck it in around me
children tell
no labels
in our dresses
you can guess
our mother’s hand know
that we were matching
in style but not in colour
I wish I could
remember the dress
the way I feel this
beneath my hand
Mum needs no scrap of
fabric
sewn on anywhere
to find the effulgence
of our faces
we
rise up in holographic plasm
from her
blue-lined book
of measure
a chart in
her secret garden
the scraps and
envelopes
benign intense this
the contents
given from my father’s
brown hand
and for my records
my infants band right off my foot
my see-through curl
snipped and tied
like the sample card for silk
the wrinkle which isn’t string
my cord
the snipping from our final fitting
snuggled in a bindle
this corner of forever
is my own
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