I am three years old, lying in my mother’s bed on a warm, spring day.

It is nap time. The moan of eighteen-wheelers passing on the interstate is carried on the breeze, breaking the silence of my pink-walled prison. Mum sleeps, her chest rising and falling, her song a steady, soft rhythm ruffling my hair.

Without glasses, the room is a blur, but I see the white curtain rise and fall and wonder about the truck wheels weeping their melodies along the asphalt. Where are they going? I wonder. The mournful sound fills me with unease.

I quietly pick last night’s gum off the top of the headboard, pressing it between my fingers, warming it into Silly Putty and paste it to the cover of Green Eggs and Ham.

I don’t know why I do it.

Mum’s arm wraps around my ribs, and she pulls me in, dropping a kiss on the top of my head, breathing into my sweaty penny hair.

“Go to sleep,” she mumbles.

The trucks are still crying… but my eyelids begin to droop. Between the warmth of my mother and the cool of the breeze, I sleep at last.

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