Sign

The sign was in the middle of nowhere, but it stood tall, proudly. Wrapped around it were thin strips of metal, holding cardboard signs.

Each sign ended like an arrow and on it was written the name of a city, as well as its distance to that spot.

To the man huddled in the jacket looking at the sign out in the desert, it was an unfair oasis. Designed by humans, the numbers under the cities were never taken seriously.

People walked by and they imagined that if they just kept walking in the direction of Venice forever they'd get there just over the hill, that if they followed the one to Seattle they'd find it waiting just past the horizon.

The sign was sad, pointing out how far one needed to go and how one could never hope to visit these places at once. But it stood as a symbol to that hope, as if one day a pole could be placed in the middle of the earth and with a little walking one could travel the globe.