Tragic Stillness

I was a bright cherry red

before the many rains

gradually, stealthily

marred and rusted my beauty.

The craters that once contained

my black burning rubber tires

now are home to shrubs and ferns instead,

entombing me where I sit.

My engine that once exploded with vigor,

roaring as it sent me ripping down the road,

spitting noxious fumes,

now lays still and near silent

with the faint chirping of hatchlings living in it

drowning out my sobbing.

My seats that once held passengers

screaming along to a song

blasting on my radio,

now gutted and unusable,

infested by parasitic creatures

selfishly stashing food.

I have been ravaged

by the invisible and patient

hand of time.

My former glory and vitality

cracked and dented

and rusted away,

leaving me a husk;

a shell of myself,

imprisoned within the scrap-metal cage

that is my body.

My cries,

my desperate, ravenous hunger

to fly just once more,

all of it falls upon the deaf ears

of the forest.

I will stay

as I am

for the rest of time.

I have been reduced to

the setting of another story

rather than the protagonist of my own.