Recalculating by Jeffery Allen Tobin

At mile marker one-oh-nine,
the GPS voice recalculates your sins,
mispronounces your last chance for redemption
as a diner off Route 5,
where the coffee tastes like burnt promises
and waitresses’ smiles flicker
like the neon sign outside—
broken but blinking still.

You are here (you are always here),
in the unfolding map of second guesses,
cruising past landmarks of your misadventures—
a panorama of almosts and not-quites.
The odometer counts each mile like a rosary bead,
a litany of could-haves echoing in the cabin
of your mid-size, sensible rental sedan.

There’s humor here, dark as the highway asphalt,
in how you navigate life’s sharp turns:
an expert in missing exits,
taking detours through other people’s lives,
the rearview mirror reflecting
the shrinking figures of friends,
faded like the billboards
advertising lost towns and ghost attractions.

Each rest stop is a vignette,
characters fleeting—a trucker with a philosopher’s gaze,
a couple sharing a cigarette, their silence
a perfect circle of complicity.
You buy a postcard, send it nowhere,
caption it in your mind:
“Wish I weren’t here.”

At the next rest area,
you stretch legs cramped by miles and metaphors,
contemplate the vending machine’s existential crisis—
out of order, just like you.
Back on the road, the horizon stretches,
a thin line drawn by a shaky hand,
unraveling in the twilight.

The radio plays a song from your teenage years,
notes distorted through static,
a time traveler’s Morse code:
regret, regret, regret.
But you drive on,
fueled by the irony that even as you flee
your past, your car’s exhaust
spews it out behind you,
a trail of breadcrumbs for fate to follow.

Recalculating,
the GPS insists,
a digital Cassandra in your dashboard—
you laugh because what else is there to do
when every road you choose
is just another scenic route to the same old mistakes?
So you drive,
the miles unspooling like a film reel—
the end credits rolling just out of reach.