The Knowing

by FRANNIE LINDSAY

I remember noticing three days earlier
the holes in the masonite
just as I had foretold
and thinking nothing of them except
that I knew they would be there I knew

so I called up my mother the next town over
to tell her that something was wrong
that I knew that something was
going to happen

that getting into my nightgown
putting the dishes away
even brushing my teeth
all these were to someone
a tease I could not get away with

my mother said darling you are blessed
with a runaway horse of a mind
she really said that so I believed her
and fed the vast obedient animal
extra proverbial sugar

and I remember the useless moonlight
draped over my chair like a blouse
I would never wear
draped over my typewriter yes and
my stuffed dog fallen out of bed

but most of all I remember
the wings he tore from the parts of me
least able to fly their ungainly fluttering
guiding him to me and over me
then on me and I remember

the walls shouting and I remember the desk
and the bureau and I remember
the nightstand shouting wake up
but most of all I remember later
the walls with their holes
his eyes had used on me

Frannie Lindsay's sixth volume of poetry, The Snow's Wife, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in 2020. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, Field, Plume, etc., and in Best American Poetry 2014. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She offers writing consultations, and teaches poetry workshops on grief and trauma. She is also a classical pianist.