She’s plotted out the distances
with pushpins and long strands of yarn
between prospective colleges
and a small city labeled “Home”
on the big, multicolored map
she’s tacked onto her bedroom wall.

The travel times are written there
in thick dark Sharpie lettering:
it’s thirteen hours to Chapel Hill,
another hour to Williamsburg,
but only nine to Michigan,
a third of that to Truman State.

Tonight, her father told her that
to ask six months might be too much.
The doctors took his kidney out 
while she was in Virginia, but
they fear the cancer’s spread too far.
He didn’t want to spoil her trip.

She runs upstairs, into her room,
and falls sobbing onto the bed.
What do the hours, the pins, the strings
mean now, if they can only count
the miles that lie between her schools
and this enormous emptiness?