It took me six years to complete a task I started before lockdown

This week, poet and artist Frieda Hughes finally sews the hem of a party dress she bought years ago

THE RED DRESS

New, it has hung in see-through plastic from the wardrobe door

Waiting for stitches for longer than Covid.

Voluminous, its glitter of sequins embraces the bodice,

But its net hem is a thing that no sewing machine could shorten.

Back then,

I traced my needle and thread through half of its distance

Before distractions tossed it aside like a useless skin

Still with the hemming pins in. The right kind of party

Would have sent me scurrying to finish what I’d started,

But the parties stopped, and nights out in a great dress

Were suddenly forbidden as lockdown clamped us

Into our flats and houses, bedrooms and nightmares.

Nine days later I donned my half-hemmed frock,

The remaining pins darting at my ankles like mosquitoes,

And YouTubed my sixtieth birthday

With 10 packets of chocolate peanuts and a glass of red wine

In a dress I was going to wear to a much better time

That never came. And now, in hope, I am stitching the ending

So I can put it away with all the other selves

That I long to be seen in.