by Shannon K. Winston
after Wilhelm Tobien’s autochrome “A Girl Knitting in the Old Zaan Costume”
For hours, the girl stares at the stitch she’ll never knit.
White yarn loops around her index finger: it’s all for show.
For hours, I map out poems I’ll never write.
I have nothing to show, so I gaze at the girl in the picture who pretends to knit.
How long has she been sitting there in a pink
satin coat and blue flowered dress?
How long have I idled at my desk? I haven’t written in months.
My newborn snores in his bassinet. My dog grunts at my feet.
For hours, the girl stares at the stitch she’ll never knit.
The lace bonnet squeezes her temples. I imagine her headache
is my own. For hours, I peer out the window.
I’ve misplaced my socks; my feet are cold. Laundry piles up.
The girl sits in the entryway of a house in the Netherlands
over a hundred years ago. She never looks up—
this girl bejeweled in light who emerged
from the smallest pinhole and potato starch. Little Potato
is what I call my son. Will you knit a hat for him?
I pretend the girl says yes. It’s snowing again.
I marvel at the ball of white yarn
in the foreground, at the slack that looks like
a u, a curly q, the start of a line. I’d like to believe
this is how the making of everything begins.
::
Shannon K. Winston is the author of The Worry Dolls (Glass Lyre Press, 2025) and The Girl Who Talked to Paintings (Glass Lyre Press, 2021). Her individual poems have appeared in Bracken, Cider Press Review, the Los Angeles Review, RHINO Poetry, SWWIM Every Day, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Find her here.
Image: “Sampler.” Dutch, 19th century. In the Public Domain.
ID: A colorful embroidery sampler.
Psaltery & Lyre 