World Wide Route

The first time I watched something leave our city, I followed it with my eyes until the sky swallowed it.

Growing up, distance had always meant losing something. Friends moved away. Factories closed. Names disappeared from familiar doors. I believed every departure was another kind of ending.

Then I watched our work being labeled, cleared and carried beyond the places that had taught us to doubt ourselves. The route crossed states, oceans and languages I had only seen printed on maps.

That was when distance changed its meaning.

It was no longer the space between where we were and where we wanted to be. It became proof that something built under pressure could travel farther than the conditions that created it.

The world had always felt impossibly large.

Now it looked like an address.