The Bank of America building
    showed itself on the horizon
    at 11:26p.m. this time,

    which is a ridiculous hour
    to ask a skyline
    to become a finish line,

    but there it was:

    Atlanta, finally remembering to be visible.

Orca and I
     had been making the day
     the only way the day allowed:

     one rest stop at a time.

Construction first.

Then traffic.

Then the kind of wreck
     that turns a road into a parking lot

     with better lane markings and worse manners.

Nearly five hours
       handed over to delays,

       which is a very official way
       of saying:

       so much for making good time.

But time had stopped being the point.

At some point,
   the only honest goal was movement.

At some point,
   movement itself
   got promoted to victory.

Water for Orca.
Gas for Nero.
Messages for you.

Back on the road.

Again,
      and again,

      and again.

Throughout the day,
       you kept giving updates from your side
       while I traded back
       little road stories from mine:

       slowdowns,
       stops,
       small progress,
       the dog’s opinions,
       the map’s bad jokes.

You expected me
    in the afternoon,
    which was reasonable,

    before the interstate chose violence.

So the thread kept checking:

         “Are you there yet?”

And then,
          reasonably later:

        “Are you there yet?”

And then,
         with the full authority
         of someone who had been patient
         long enough:

         “Are you there yet?”

Nope,
     not yet,
     but closer.

Always closer,
       even when the road
       was being a dumbass
          about proving it.

The funny thing is,
    Irby’s wasn’t supposed
    to feel like the end
    of the whole trip.

Jackson was a stop.
DFW was a switch.
Vegas was a conference.
Atlanta was home.

But Irby’s—

     Irby’s is where
     the map turns back into us.

So when I finally
   got back here,
   when the car stopped,
   when Orca and I
   had actually made it
   through the construction,
                  the wreck,
             the slow crawl,
     the hour getting later…

                  and later…

  as if it had a point to make…

  there was only one arrival that mattered.

Your message hit:

     “Don’t ever leave me this long again.”

And I didn’t need
     to be clever.

I didn’t need to explain the traffic,
                      the rest stops,
                           the wreck,
      or the math of all those miles

      being longer than they looked on the screen.

There was only one correct answer.

“Yes ma’am.”

That was the whole road
     folding itself down small enough

                  to fit in two words.

Because I won’t.

Not like this.
Not this long.

Not with every rest stop
    asking the same question.

Every delay dragging your name
        farther across the day,
      every mile proving again
            that away from you

      isn’t a direction I need to practice.

So: Yes.

Yes to the order.

Yes to the correction.

Yes to Atlanta finally showing up at 11:26.

Yes to Irby’s,
    to Nero making it,
    to the thread…

    still warm when I got here.

And: “Yes, Ma’am,”

     to not leaving you
     this long again.