Last Gasp

KAMI WESTHOFF

At sunset, your fist reverses into palm,
reveals the perfect skipping rock.
While March’s last gasp slaughters the sky,
you show our daughter the hip-crick,
the crater of pointer and thumb, the wrist
flick that galaxies the sea. You’ve done so little
of this lately, I tuck my complaints into a chasm
of later, watch the surface absorb each wound,
each ring expanding into an orbit of okay.
While she practices, I scoot so there’s room
for you on the log. You sit, then flick a spider
before its legs find mine. It’s easy, this kind of us.
Down shore, a heron hunts, patient as a century.
Above shore, seagulls giggle and gawk at our daughter
who is so terrible at skipping rocks that when she draws
back her arm, we duck in every direction.

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KAMI WESTHOFF is the author of the story collection The Criteria, and the forthcoming Sacral, winner of the 2024 Floating Bridge Chapbook Contest, Sleepwalker, winner of the 2017 Minerva Rising Chapbook Contest, and two other chapbooks. Her prose and poetry have been published in various journals including Booth, Carve, Fugue, Hippocampus, West Branch, and Waxwing. She teaches creative writing at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.