shr_4.1

Kami Westhoff
Release
The phone call about his release
enters her ear like a letter
opener. It’s unlikely he will cause
you any more grief, she is told, but
we want to be on safe side.
Their daughter, only a month into walking,
toddles into the gate at the top of the stairs.
It quivers, and she worries about its installation.
She’d never before held a drill, and its vibration
settled in her throat like a lie.
She thanks the man
on the phone, and promises,
at his insistence, caution. She imagines
his head as two dots, a triangle, an semi-circle,
arms and legs and body as simple
as sticks. If he were real, flesh and shit
and guts and bone, he would at least let slip
a tone of defeat, regret, some hint
of the pity one feels when it watches
a creature, whatever its kind,
drag itself roadside.
The baby shakes the gate’s railing,
her smile exposes gums erupting
with bone. It is almost time for her dinner:
mashed avocado, blueberries, cheese cubed
smaller than necessary. Then her bath
where the yellow duck tests the temperature
and promises Okay. She lifts her, hushes
her fussing before it begins. Its legs tighten
around her hip as its chest twists away, back
in an arch toward the gate.
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