Future 86.

There are signs on the side of this treacherously dark road
That read “Future I-86.”

As if the road doesn’t yet exist.
As if we’re driving to a place that we want to get to
But can’t.
Because it’s not ready.
Because we’re not ready.

The first time I looked over,
Across two lanes of empty, snowy road,
To the black letters that shined
Against white,
It was the middle of winter.
And I listened to my father talk about plans
That whatever powers-that-be had
To make the road an interstate.

Whatever the hell that entails.

By the time you’re done here,
They’ll be finished,” he said,
Squinting his eyes and rubbing the fog of
Of the windshield so that he could see through the night.

I asked him what he meant by “finished.”
He shrugged his shoulders and said that he didn’t quite know.

As he talked
I sat in the passengers seat, rubbing my hands together to fight off the cold,
Thinking about where I would be
When this was all over.
I knew, of course.
Definitely.

(At 18, one –of course—knows just about everything. Definitely)

Five years later and they’re still not done.
The “Future 86” sign still looms
Somewhere out in the darkness:
A reminder of unfinished business.
Of unfulfilled goals,
Missed opportunities,
Work still to be done.

And I,
I am not nearly done, either.
I find myself back in a place
With streets that are haunted
By people I have loved,
Mistakes I have made
And shadows of the person I was.

It seems like decades have passed in six months.

I search the streets—
Up and down
And down
And down
Hills.

These streets that I have walked, here
These towns that I have driven through
Counteless and countless times and times
And times and times
And time stops,
Here on these streets.

On the road to Wisconsin,
The snow falls, against the odds, in an early September sky.
And we are running
As fast as we can.