By Oliver Cubillos
Today starts just as it always does, except when it doesn’t: a woman is taking me home, so I’m told, and as she starts my engine for the very first time I chirp with glee—there are some errands we must run, she tells me when we’re on the road together at last, including but not limited to: an oil change, a fresh coat of paint, a scrub to my windshield, and a new set of tires; and when that’s all done, my new owner tells me I have a new name, that she’ll call me Shirley, and together we spend that afternoon roaming gray peaks and valleys and hills, listening to the squeak and whine of worn rubber on gravel, and it’s here where I honk and beep to my heart’s desire; when we stop for gas for the very first time, I watch the sky roll over my back; when we return to the street, I sing contently with oil slick on my lungs—I’ve come to discover there’s great excitement to be found on the open road, and for the first time I see such lovely sights (vistas and meadows and turnpikes); the woman has a set routine, she tells me, and together we’ll go from home to work to home to store to work to home; there are rules to follow and of course I abide by them (I’m obedient and resilient, factory-made)—she treats me well, for when I stumble and scrape my bumper on the curb, she coos from the driver’s seat and reminds me that I can feel no pain (I’m only made of metal and steel), and I know she loves me because it’s then she recites: we’ll sweep all that away, that rust and grime and, come tomorrow, you’ll be clean and good as new—and it’s only when I come to rest at last in that dusty garage, and the woman taps my hood one final time before she goes inside for sleep, that I blink away cobwebs and dust, and suddenly there’s a great hollow husk in the dark shell of my body, and I wonder: if only I, myself, could take control of the wheel…like a guttural punch, I remember I’m only an automobile; though I have a name and a voice, I have no heart, and when, tonight, slumber eventually finds me, no dreams will ever come.
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Oliver Cubillos is a writer and filmmaker from Southern California. He recently graduated from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts with a BFA in Media Arts Production and a minor in literature.