Étui: a Series

Carpet needles

outsized sharps for very heavy materials

somewhere in half memory

I hold the wheat bags

my father must have sewn them closed

with baling twine and a strong needle

those bags were washed in the dam

dragged out by tractor

dried on the fence

which stretched north south

at the back of the sheds

I dozed on a stack of them

in the bagshed

glazed in afternoon sun

with the scratch of the fig tree

against corrugated iron

overstitching through my sleep

I see it now in his knees

that he lifted full bags

shed to truck to seeder

with his young man’s body

not ready for the strain.

Sharps

most general domestic needles

she pricks her finger

pushes it hard to try and make it bleed

“my finger hurts here but is bleeding there”

you’re supposed to keep a bandaid in your sewing kit

you can’t get blood out of a stone

sympathy is in very short supply

if you’re bleeding go home.

Betweens

tailoring and fine work on heavy materials

I gave up embroidery

after the children were born

with one last project

for each one

I sewed and sewed

through enforced rest

blood pressure up

in a hospital bed

stitch stitch

on soft aida cloth

or creamy wool

while my babies grew

eyelashes and nails

and doctors’ warnings

of early births and incubators

were unpicked by days.

Milliners or straws

longer than sharps for basting on hats

her mum did a course in hats

by the time she’d finished

they were out of fashion

except for the queen

or race day fascinators

she always wanted to learn

but the course changed

and she never got back

I went for a position

in the millinery bridal section

but my cousin got the job.

Glovers

have a specially ground triangular point

which will pierce leather without tearing it

by the time we met

we were already embroidering

our lives

she, with the mathematical

calculations of blackwork

me with scratched out words

somehow those schoolgirl stitches

caught our hearts together

with a needle which did not

break flesh

a thread which does not fray.