Peter at the Window

Hello Peter

No, there’s no mistake

The window is locked

I put a lock on it last week

In preparation for your—

Well, let’s call it a visit

Peter, I regret to inform you

That your generational field trip

To Neverland

Will not be happening this time around

For one thing, my daughter is terrified of flying

Put her on a plane

And she throws up everywhere

It’s one thing on a plane

Where they give you those little paper bags

But if she were just soaring through the air

With no bag in front of her

London would wake up tomorrow

Covered in my daughter’s vomit

In addition to...that
I just don’t see this trip
As being all that…wise

Peter, you’re a nice boy

Nobody’s saying you aren’t

Well the police might

But they're limited in their imagination

But the fact is

You can’t just spirit young girls away

To a quote-unquote--

Magical Land

Expose them to pirates and crocodiles

And then send them back home

Where they’re expected to do mundane things

Like schoolwork and origami

That’s our Craft of the Week by the way

Although Emily isn’t very adept at precision

So I suspect her swan will turn out

To be more of a deformed squirrel

All these reasons and more

Are why I can’t let you

Take off with her into the night

That, and, you know,

She’s a twelve-year-old girl

And these excursions of yours

Usually involve kidnapping

And wild orphans

It just wouldn’t be reasonable of me

As a mother and legal guardian

To allow that sort of thing

Even if it is a family tradition

Why, when you took me with you,

I had to explain to that tribe of Natives

That their outfits

Were perpetuating stereotypes

And they made me their goddess

And covered me in mermaid blood

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it

But it’s simply no way for a young girl

To spend a Saturday evening!

And your insistence

That anyone over the age of fifteen

Is unable to fly with you

Is, quite frankly, extremely unsettling

You may look young, Peter

But we both long you’re as long in the tooth

As they come

And rescuing pre-teens from men with hooks

Is not an appropriate activity

For someone who’s been around the block

As long as you have

The window stays locked

The shades stay drawn

And my daughter will never know anything

About lost shadows

Or how to revive a sprite

I won’t lie and say I don’t have reservations

About all this

But times change, Pete

Even if lost boys don’t

The girls you take from this room

Aren’t identical

They each live in their own time

And evolve as that time passes

The experience my great-great-great grandmother had

Isn’t going to be the same one

That my daughter would have

Or the one her daughter would have

You’re used to taking brave souls

Who live in a world

Where women are taught

How to conceal their strength

Behind seeming vulnerability

They went along with anything back then

Even flying boys

Who wanted to send them straight on to till morning

Into god-knows-what

Today we’re more aware of our choices

Even if we still have trouble making them

And that’s where I come in

I’m making a choice

Not just to sing a lullaby to my daughter

And leave her protected by nothing

But a dog with a kerchief

But to actively mother her

To sit by her window

And wait to make sure

Nothing gets in

It’s possible I’ll keep out the good stuff

With the bad

But sometimes that’s the risk you take

My daughter can’t have the childhood I did

And I suppose there might be something wrong in that

But when I was flying with you, Peter

There were so many things

I didn’t know

That I didn’t think of

That I didn’t think to think of

The idea that we were up there

Suspended only by our own happy thoughts—

Children just aren’t as happy

As they once were, Peter

I simply don’t believe

There’s enough happiness

To keep them
Aflight