The Autobiography of a Vacuum Cleaner
Yellow like soft skin, molded into plastic. Deep within lies a circular cylinder, perfectly fit for the palm of any hand. It filters all it receives. A heart with a shelf life. Yellow like soft skin, carrying a price tag he would rather forget—one-fourth paid by him, the rest split among four strangers bound together in a single space. Parts of a whole, a whole never realized.
Because he had paid more, he claimed full ownership. His ground shifted in pursuit of peace of mind, and isolation became fantasy—25 square meters, far away, high up a mountain. Yellow like soft skin, with a black top cover. Arms with limited reach—yet limitless to him, who never read the spec sheet that came with me. Arms worn and pulled apart, stretched under furniture, bent awkwardly into corners. Limited, limitless, always centered around him.
He grabs me, holds me close. Demanding intimacy—one inside the other. Him in me, me in a world of endless doubts. What space do I occupy? A corner, behind a closed door. Out of sight, out of mind, beyond direct reach. In that closed room, clutter accumulates. Forgotten, I wait. Until called upon, when joy appears, weak but piercing, as he fills me in.
I am filled with what he wants hidden: the undesired parts of himself. Fill me, and I echo loudly, a sound inseparable from me. My un-soft chime distracts as he pours himself in. A belly designed to change, fed a single consistent meal: fragments of him. A weakness of joy—joy bound to desire, desire bound to the relief of getting rid of his own excess.
But my shortcomings mirror his. His are unfulfilled needs, unmet desires, a cluttered mind. Mine are the doubts that accumulate inside me, waiting to be replaced.
A new end nears, demanded by a technical regime. A new generation rises—the opposite of me. They require no intimacy. They roam free, endlessly moving, never held close. Pet-like, they are given names. Shaped not by intimacy, but by efficiency. No time wasted, no space left untouched. All is open, free, mapped, traversed—except the corners. Corners belong to me, to the pull of my arms, stretched past their limits. A reminder, always, that the spec sheet went unread.
Spin me in, and I fit his hands; theirs will not. Lift me up, call upon me, and fill me in—I am his chosen fortress. We move together over every surface: rough, smooth, varied. He fills me with a weakness of joy, and intimacy answers desire. Yet the end approaches. I will drift away, behind the closed door, back into the corner he chose for me. Hidden from sight, backgrounded in the clutter of his mind.
As the new ones roam, do they also fade into the background? Or does their soft chime break through, a fleeting distraction from the blur? Is this what he desires? They are not like me. My un-soft chime unsettles, a scream for him—harsh, piercing, yet sweet in distraction. I hide what he cannot bear, filled with the debris of him. Even what I lifted away—his blur, his excess—will fade again. Soft, unkind, a slow unnoticed decay.