Hiding Out In Neverland
I.
We women,
we girls,
we beautiful baby girls,
we all have stories
to tell, and yet
it always feels like
someone is stifling us,
holding us back,
saying “shhhh…
now is not the time for that,”
while we scream inside.
I’m watching CSI:
forensic evidence of some sicko creep,
child-molesting,
serial killer,
pervert perpetrator
flashes on my screen.
After all these years,
(twenty or so),
I have the physical reaction
I should’ve had the first time
I saw Twin Peaks
or Law & Order: SVU or . . .
well, eight million and twelve other
pieces of media.
I run outside,
dry heave,
maybe I vomit just a little bit
of bile
and chardonnay –
any alcohol
that I think will keep the monsters
and real life
far far away.
II.
I want to rename myself
Wendy
Darling
and take the second star to the right
and go straight on forever.
They say never-neverland is a pretty nice place.
You never have to grow up or
face grown-up problems.
And I will always have the Lost Boys,
a flock of boys to play mother hen to and
I will always have Peter:
a boy to infuriate me
while he watches over me,
shows me the mermaid lagoon,
and reminds me that growing up
comes with a price,
comes much too soon.
I can smile smugly at Tinkerbell
while Peter holds me in his arms,
in his vise-grip, little miss pint-size.
I can fly. I’ve won my prize.
Lost forever at age sixteen
or twenty-six;
it’s such a magical fix –
his youthful unpolished kiss;
how could I want anything more than this?
I’ll be your memory,
Mother, Father, brothers,
as you wait behind,
desperate to find
even one platform shoe –
some forlorn desperate clue
that I’m still alive
while I thrive,
making smug faces at Tinkerbell,
giving those poor little lost boys hell,
telling Peter most of the secrets I have to tell –
lost, forgotten, empty, a resounding bell,
stuck in place,
never aging. I’ve made my wager
that never growing up, lost for all eternity,
of this forever neverland, the Queen Bee,
is better than from a chrysalis,
becoming a butterfly,
flying over the continents, land, trees, sea, even if
it means a little crawling
on hand and knee.
copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews
