We wait like teenagers for our owners’ car to leave the driveway. All day has been spent reading the notes back in my head, turning the humans’ nonsense words into lyrics of my song, catching their absent-minded humming in my cracks. Sometimes I find Esperanza looking at me with pity, thinking,That wall must be lonely, all of its art being stripped from it.

The humans wonder if inanimate objects get lonely. We wear emotionless expressions. They think we are simple “its” painted only to please their own eye. However, we are complicated beings: punctured by tacks, coated over with a soft ivory and then suddenly changed to a harsh blue. We are told by our owners what we should look like. We have little choice in our appearance.

So as our owners’ car leaves the driveway, we sigh in relief of the expectations imposed upon us and sing the song of their sorrows.