My wife prays for rain
after she hangs the laundry,
kneeling on a dirt floor
and head bowed as if in a cathedral.
I have not seen her plead God for something so earnestly
since the day we left the city for the plains but I suppose
I have made us both beggars, starving
for divine intervention in a life ruined
by chance, by card trick,
by the husband who swore to provide
more than a source of shame.
When the prayer is finished she looks at me:
“How much,” she asks,
“did you bargain our lives away for?”
and my mouth is so full of dust
that I cannot answer.