a fleeting sign

Driving home through Charlotte on Route 7 last week, the car ahead of me suddenly veered off the road, down the grassy ditch and into the speed limit sign. A surprise attack. The weathered sign went down in a violent flash. I saw the sedan stop in my rearview. A man got out, inspected his front bumper then drove off. The next day, I saw that the sign hadn't actually been flattened. Only knocked back into a crooked angle, the perforated length of steel wrung and twisted in the opposite direction. The sign numbers now stared down at the grass like a pair of bruised and swollen eyes, a face turned away from the road in humiliation. Today the wounded sign was gone. And another gleamed in its place, completely dumb, far more willful.