Answer

The jacket symbolically represents the comfort of being at home. It fits her perfectly and she almost seems at one with it ‘these arms are sleeves. These fingertips are buttons,’ as if the jacket is personified as a person. She is the jacket, protected and warm, like her parents keep her warm and protect her from harm. It could also be that she feels smothered by the jacket and needs to escape.

The anger of the argument with her mother is exaggerated by the short, sharp sentences and phrases at the end of the second stanza: ‘Temper, temper. Questions/ in the house. You seeing red. Blue murder. Bed.’ It is almost like fragments of what happened, a short, sharp summary of the angry events.