Short Shot Entry

The delicious sound of tyres crunching across dry gravel stung me as I swung in the breeze hanging from a thick branch. My mind wandered back to a time so long ago I wondered if I had maybe dreamed it. Such adventures my friends and I had, the way sand filled my grooves as I rolled through the sandy beaches of Torquay, the way we squealed with delight as we struggled to keep our hold on the hot tar as we took a corner to fast.

A gentle breezed knocked me from my day dream and I inwardly sighed. I missed the road so much. I even missed the children and their games; they would talk of walks in the woods nearby, swims in the lake two towns over, trips to the hustle and bustle of the big city where men and even sometimes women wore suits and nodded to each other as they passed in the streets. But the children were gone now, with their own tires to take them places I never could. Oh I could give them the hope of touching a cloud or catching a star but I always felt guilty as I pulled the child back to the ground. I couldn’t give them the sky, no matter how high we climbed.

I can remember the first time I went up a mountain, we were so close to the edge I could feel the wind blow right past me, and as we drew closer to the edge I dared a glimpse of the sheer drop we toyed with. It was incredible! I heard once there are tyres they fly in the air although I’ve never seen them but a Michelin tyre swore on his mothers wrecking yard that they were attached to big cars that fly although he called them airplanes. I can only think maybe he smelled too many exhaust fumes.

I wondered where that tyre was now. Was he tied cruelly to a tree? Condemned to spend a lifetime going no further than a rope will allow? No I say to myself frustrated, this is my penance if I had of been a better tyre I would have held on tighter, I would never had let the road slip away from me, oh how the back tyres screeched as we slid wildly across the icy road.

“Nothing to grip, nothing to hold on to” I had screamed back. We tried so hard from what I hear part of us is still on that road, marking the path we took. Flowers the children say adorn the tree every year though they don’t know I was there. They wouldn’t be so horrible to speak of it in front of me if they knew.

Two of us didn’t survive the collision and they were sent away to be destroyed. The back left back tyre had wept silently for days after they took them.

The man who took care of us never came home, never came and got us. I missed his smile and the way he proudly washed us, and if we were lucky we got a little wax as well, he would then rest a hand on top of me and smile fondly, and I had always tried to look as nicely back for him. I don’t think he noticed but I didn’t mind.

So I won’t complain that I’m stuck here. Because I know he is stuck somewhere to. Where he is you can’t see the sun, or feel the breeze or smell the grass after its mowed…

So I will swing here and hopefully one day the children will come back, and I can try to get them to the stars… if I can do that then I’ll be forgiven.