Detours: Cathy Allman

Detours
by Cathy Allman

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I drove past my exit on I-95 again,
the second time this week.

I’m frightened. I talk to the part
of myself at the wheel when I veer

off at 17 when I meant to take
the off-ramp at 16. Where am I?

How’d I get here? I turn around.
There is chatter in my mind along

my route although I drive alone.
I pass familiar landmarks

alone but in conversation
with the woman I was another

time on this road. I’m like a film
where the soundtrack is out of sync

with the lip movements. Dialogue
entertains and advances the story,

but someone else narrates,
commentates, watches while

I’m at the wheel in conversation
with remembered questions

and imagined tomorrows. I turn
back, re-enter the highway in the right

direction en route to my destination.
Be patient, I tell both the driver and the critic.

I think of the green, blue, and yellow stick
family held up with magnetic letters

on my refrigerator, and it triggers the memory
of the whiteboard on my father’s door—

with Today is Tuesday. It’s ninety degrees.
Lunch is turkey sandwich and apple pie.

My father told me how delicious
his sugar-free apple pie tasted.

He said he loved me. He said,
Thank you. I say thank you back to the memory.

I’m flooded with scrambled recollections
of my granddaughters, laugh at how they

each grab an apple from the bowl
on my table, take a bite, and say,

I’m done. I’m tired of my reasons
my book isn’t finished,

all the no-outlet cul-de-sacs
I turned onto by accident,

the streets of houses I didn’t buy,
the addresses of homes I sold.

Familiar haunts no longer there—
morphed into a phone store

or yoga studio or luncheonette.
For a moment I’m lost.

The next minute, I’m in a hurry.
In the end, I’m not there yet.

At the red light, again immersed in nostalgia
I explain to the fairy tale—the movie star

I dressed up as from the trunk
beside my childhood cardboard kitchen—

I say, Trick or treat, Sleeping Beauty,
the years have wrapped sweetness.