Preemptive Eulogy for a Student Car

 

Cale Plett

 

 

 

You were born on the wrong side of history, but more importantly,
the wrong side of Y2K. Before your day, land yachts roamed
the road. Our greatest predators, iron bones. James Dean and Jay
Gatsby died and lived the American dream, roll the credits, play Bruce
Springsteen. Glory Days is a tragedy of realizing ashes to ashes 

too late. There was nothing a little green car like you could change
by the time you whined out the factory gates. The glowing leaf
on your dashboard was token reassurance that you were something
entirely different than the luxury sedans of past and present. Nobody
my age can afford those now. My great grandpa never knew you, 

but he anticipated your kind. Every time a sports car purred by
he’d slap his thigh and say, that car could pass anything but
a gas station. That wasn’t your problem. Your check engine light
was always there, invisible below the surface, lemon regret at any
moment. I dreaded it. We met when I was eighteen, back when you 

were the cutest car I’d ever seen. You were least like a machine,
which appealed to me. You let me forget that all beings take and give.
Four-cylinder engines run on the same blood pouring through black arteries
crossing my hometown prairies. The number after the V is both
status symbol and potential, but all I needed you to be was something 

which could carry me from the country to the city so I didn’t
suffocate. We ran together, and whenever I couldn’t breathe, we’d go
west to the mountains, east to the lakes, someplace without powerlines
showcasing exercises in perspective. With you, the only direction I
knew was away. You’d already been totaled and badly repaired by 

someone else, with scars that grew from the inside out as you facilitated
my summertime freedom while we killed the places I needed and believed
in. All of this is why I loved you. All of this is why I never gave you
a name. I thought when our time was through I could pretend
none of it had hurt as I laid you, anonymous, in the toxic dirt. 

 

 

Cale Plett (he/they) is a nonbinary writer who lives in Winnipeg, where they are watching and listening for stories. Some they remember, some they forget, and some they turn into poetry, prose, and lyrics. Cale’s poetry and fiction are published in Grain, CV2, The Anti-Languorous Project, and Riddle Fence.