Having decided to change her life,

she slashes

welts of green

over her eyebrows.

She arrives at her house

to find the writers’ group of five

bent like fingers

over each other’s pages, laid out

on the lounge room coffee table.

There is her body

sitting with them

leaning into their words–

they don’t notice

her disembodied animation

in the doorway.

One tells her

she has asked a few new members

and points to the other side

of the room.

It has ballooned

into a public hall,

filled with duplications

of her dining table, surrounded

by bent backs,

cardiganed, striped, seamless,

with faceless heads and voices

reading from their writings,

louder and louder to overtake

each other. She decides not

to worry about her eyebrows,

and rushes from table to table,

saying: that image rises from the page,

saying: here, your character is coming to life—

do you see,

do you see?

She leaves her body’s imprint

at each table and stands

in the airy empty space

between the two half-rooms.

They are asking her questions

but have no time

for an answer. No-one

has noticed her eyebrows.