Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano

There was a lot of driving for me to do,
with Mom in the car, between Arch Rock and Lebanon,
and of course we got lost the first time,
Mom’s directional accuracy not even close to being a broken compass,
just off off off, in the spaces where I’d have to
interrupt her Buddha sermon and ask her,
foolishly, LEFT?, RIGHT?, STRAIGHT? MOM?
ending up having to go backward to the first point
where we got lost—and let me tell you,
all red and brown barns look the same, so
thank goodness I remembered the one that had
“Jesus Saves” painted on the roof,
near the McDonald’s with free wifi so I could
Google-maps-screen-cap the rest of our way to where Dad was.

There seems to be no end in sight when you’re driving
through trees like that, and your mother is barrelling at you
with her reasons as to why your father has cancer,
like how he was shovelling snow a couple months ago
and hurt his shoulder, which was the same time he had
a big fight with your sister and her husband about what
was supposed to have happened at Christmas
or around it but did not—
all that combined was why your Dad has cancer.

It was then when I said, “That’s not how cancer works, Mom,”
that I missed the left Google Maps told me to make in 0.2 miles.
As if I knew better how cancer works.

The last five miles of the drive are the longest
because you are almost there, and the road is so wide
but the speed limit is a snaily 15 miles per hour
for no other reason than to honour the sacred drive
through the sacrifice of many young people
who probably barely understood how they were being used
before they couldn’t be used anymore.
As if you know better how war works.

Finally, we pulled into the handicapped parking space
I eventually stopped feeling guilty about parking in
because Mom said we were just as injured as anyone else anyway,
and we got there first, or at the right time,
so park there, take the spot, hang up the tag,
we won’t be here for long
before we have to drive back again.