November 22, 2022

between exits

There’s a highway where you live that seems like it’s always under construction.
Hard-hatted workers scuttle around the repairs like flower-drunk bees, and machinery
pushes the same dirt back and forth. And there you are, in the stifling urgency of your car,
on the way to an appointment that won’t hold your spot, or with ice cream melting
in the trunk. You wonder when it will be done, the asphalt poured, the dunce-cap cones
pulled up and stacked on a flatbed truck, returned to that place of finished business.
But the line between exits is long, and the radio’s full of commercials, and the gas gauge
winds down like a stopwatch toward empty. There’s nothing to do in this vague limbo
between here and there, which is why, perhaps, when your turn finally comes,
you raise a hand from the greasy wheel and wave at anyone who might be watching.