Baby Wheels by Elena Zhang

Our babies all grew wheels one day. Axles sprang from the soles of their chubby feet and shot out bony spokes. We saw the safety issues right away, but their rubber tires rolled over our protests, then over our toes. We tried to toss heavy locks over their heads, but they turned them into necklaces and teethed on the chains. We tried to contain them in cribs and playpens, but they slipped out of our grasp like memory.

Our babies shoved bottles and juice boxes down their waistbands before zipping down gulches, then army-crawling up grassy hills, tiny fists grabbing earth and pebbles, squeezing and releasing, jagged edges on silk palms. Our babies gurgled laughs even as they crashed into brick walls and into each other. Even as they scraped knees and bruised chins and hiccupped tears. Our babies rolled through schools, through hospitals, through cheap diners. In one door and out the other. So fast they caused traffic jams as we chased them endlessly through town, our creaking legs no match for their greased wheels.

Eventually, we installed protected baby lanes on our streets, because didn’t our babies deserve to live? Eventually, we got down on our hands and pumped air into their tires, because didn’t our babies deserve to keep going?

Then, without warning, our babies left us. One by one, they disappeared out of town in a blur. We never did find out if our babies outgrew their wheels, if they found a place worth stopping for. Now, we get on our bikes, we roll down the baby lanes and try to remember what it was like when our babies were here. 

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ELENA ZHANG — Elena is a Chinese-American writer and mother living in Chicago. Her work can be found in HAD, The Citron Review, Ghost Parachute, Your Impossible Voice, and Lost Balloon, among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and was selected for Best Microfiction 2024.

Art by LINDA HAWKINS — Linda is a self-taught watercolor artist and photographer. She currently resides on the central coast of California where there are a plethora of beautiful sites to inspire her to paint, or to just play outside! Her visual art has appeared in various literary magazines, including Flash Frog, Pithead Chapel, Acropolis Journal, Moss Puppy Mag, Harpy Hybrid Review, and Fish Barrel. She can be found on Blue Sky at lindamayhawkins and her website: lindamayhawkins.com.