;
Interfaith Dialogue
You hand me a twenty while I’m driving
and I ask you to slip it in my wallet
and you sigh.
I think your sigh means exasperation,
means, “My God, Woman.”
When you reach for it, I snatch it back,
hold it to the steering wheel. You say,
“You always interpret my sighs as offense.”
I punish you with silence.
The roads are empty and the silence
radiates out from our car as we drive
the streets nearing our house,
as we pass the Thai place we ate at once
and only once, just after the miscarriage.
When we open the door, our orange tabby
is in the entryway, sniffing the air, rubbing
his face on the bookshelf, both glad
and frightened we’re home.
Deja Earley’s poems, fiction, and essays have previously appeared or are forthcoming in journals like Arts and Letters, Borderlands, and Utne Reader. She has received honors in several writing contests, including the 2008 Joan Johnson Award in poetry,and the 2004-2005 Parley A. and Ruth J. Christensen Award. She was awarded first place in the 2011 Eugene England Memorial Personal Essay Contest, and she had several poems included in Fire in the Pasture. She completed a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi and she now lives in Tucson, Arizona.
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