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Exit 9

Marisol Vega

Free verse

I take the exit marked nothing,the one with a number no one bothers to remember,because the road doesn't care where I'm going,it only keeps opening.

Three in the morning, the gas station sits therelit up like it's waiting for someone in particular.I buy a coffee I know I won't finishand fold the map wrong on purpose,so the creases don't match anybody's route.

A deer stands at the shoulder,not running, not grazing,just deciding.I ease off the gas. I understand her completely.

I am not lost. I know exactly where I am:forty-one miles from a town I invented,pointed at a horizonthat keeps selling itself a little furtherevery time I get close.

Somewhere behind me, a bedstill holds the shape I left in it.Somewhere ahead, a gas stationI haven't picked yet.

I keep my foot steady on the pedallike the going is the arriving,like enough miles might finallyadd up to somewhere.

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Up nextMy Mother's Recipe for Caldo de PolloMy mother's recipe has no measurements, only gestures: a palm of salt, a handful meaning however much your hand happens to hold that day, which is not a stable unit of measurement, which is the entire problem with trying to write any of this down. I have tried for years to translate her kitchen into something a stranger could follow, and every time I fail at the exact same place: the moment she tastes the broth and adjusts it by something other than taste, some private arithmetic involving who is coming to dinner, what kind of day everyone has had, whether anyone needs forgiving. You cannot measure that. I have her handwriting on an index card that says simply "hasta que esté bueno," until it's good, and I used to think that was her being imprecise, and now, older, standing in my own kitchen guessing, I understand it was the only honest instruction she ever could have given me.