Turkey Dump

by Sydney Hegele

If we do not have to be 
good and we are made 
in the image of God does 
that mean that God does 
not have to be 
good?

Does He take 
sabbatical 
in late September? 
Does He let Toronto 
weather wax 
and wane 
cool dawn 
to hot high 
Noon because 
He is at rest? 

When we strip 
off our premature 
flannel layers, unfurl 
our dead petals, head 
back chin up eyes 
to the fire of the sunlit sky, 
does He wipe the sweat 
from his eyes? 

Does He cry 
for the hometown boy 
in the back seat of his girlfriend’s 
parents’ Dodge Grand Caravan, 
helping drop his girlfriend off 
at college in the fall, unaware 
that she will find herself 
in ivy vines and lecture halls 
and dump him while home 
On Thanksgiving weekend? No.
But

wait. is that–

yes. There He goes
now. It’s the boy’s goodbye
that did it. A demand
so meek it comes out
like a question.

Wait for me?

Wait for me?

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Sydney Hegele is an Anglo-Catholic fiction writer, poet, and essayist. They are the author of THE PUMP (Invisible Publishing 2021), winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award, and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award.