I am walking toward mirages
with the knowledge that they are fake
but with the thought that
moving to a new area of the desert
will not hurt anymore than remaining sedentary,
and I am thinking that maybe
if I walk far enough in one direction
toward these delusions
eventually I will have to reach something
other than sand
because this wasteland cannot be infinite and
I know these visions are malignant figments of my imagination
but one day there will be an oasis
that does not disappear at the touch of my dusty palms
and this will be what I have been walking toward
all this time
and these mirages are not lies,
they are promises,
they are foreshadowing
of a place better than this and
I cannot ignore these signs
because they are the only things
that keep me from sitting so long in one place
that I erode my own grave into the dirt.