my captive machine

The wheels are tigers that run you down and we carry each other through a dusty darkness. It would be dangerous on the freeway, but we're alone, not even a Denny's bleeding neon across the blurry horizon. It's a shit road and the tires kick up gravel, the wheels slide around like nylon across hips. The only light is the dashboard, the speedometer and the ruler lines of the radio. The radio's off. It's just my breath and the breath of the engine. We're like ninjas in the dark, like wild animals stalking a new life we'll pounce upon and rip apart before it can drag us down into comfort.

The car I had before was a piece of shit, and that's why I loved it. One of the back doors didn't open, one day it just quit. It had one primered panel that was a trophy of my first accident. The radiator crapped out once a year and had to be prodded back to life with a few hundred dollars. It burned oil and there were constellations of cigarette burns across the backseat. But it has a supernatural turning radius and cost nothing to insure. It was all business. I never washed it, never cleaned it out, let dirt pile up on it like layers of scars, evidence of where we'd been together (everywhere).

Now I am slowly dismantling the suburban perfection of the new car. Internally and externally I am giving it scars to toughen it up, I am the bad influence, I am carrying it far from safety and past the point of no return. It's cruel. No one else would want it now.

So here we are in the desert, in a demented parody of a bonding exercise. I trust the car because it's the only machine I've got. It trusts me because it can't get away. I wonder what it feels when we park and I go off to eat or sleep, sitting alone at rest. I wonder if it's sad, wondering, why me? My old car didn't give a fuck. My old car was too tough for that emo bullshit. My old car sat gnawing on scraps of roadkill accidentally sucked up into its gears and waited to go again. I can't speak for the new car. Maybe the new car feels it could have been more than running.

We aim not to prolong the inevitable in this household. You can sit shining in your pretty drivway, hidden from death. Or you can chase it down and get it over with.