Gaining Ground

I close my eyes, screwing them shut against the sun. The tar is warm on my back. I reach my arms and legs to the sky, dangling them in their sockets. Car engines rev. My heart beats.

The cars wait.

I wait.

I open one eye and squint at the traffic lights. Red. Their timings are familiar to me. A few more seconds and I will leap from the middle of the road and out of the path of the oncoming traffic.

A few more seconds.

A few more heartbeats.

A horn beeps, and I’m up. I sprint for the pavement and look back. The lights are green and as the cars speed away I smile, breathing fast. I am panicked, thrilled, exhilarated.

I am alive.

I walk the 100 yards back to my home in on Murray Street. I open the front door and step inside, quietly closing the door. Nobody sees me come home. Nobody saw me leave. I’ve lay in front of the traffic a couple of times already this week and I’ll do it again next week.

I am three years old.

Fifty-six years after I lay in front of the cars, my therapist told me I did it to feel normal. Such was the dysfunction I had become accustomed to in parent’s home.

I moved to number 80 Murray Street in Hobart, Tasmania with my parents sometime after my first birthday.

I am horrified to think about a child laying in the middle of the road now. The street looks busy. I ask myself my therapist was…