Spoken Word / Shadow Play

Neverland was never good enough for you

Just a dash of pixie dust didn’t make much sense

But snorting it short circuited your whirring brain and made time stop

So you could douse yourself in Eau’ de Invincibility

And pretend everyone else was smaller than you.

Peter was too stingy and stringy for your dark palate,

So you beefed yourself up with crocodile tears

And bullied little lost boys, seduced impressionable little girls

You swallowed their whimpers behind Peter’s back

They were sweeter than starlight

And Tiger Lily’s smiles from beneath her feathered headdress

Even Peter’s delighted crow when he chopped off Hook’s hand couldn’t compare

You spent too much time flirting with mermaids by stealing shells from their long locks

And fumed when you found out Peter had gotten his first kiss before you

You hated Wendy on principle

Clearly you were more deserving of thimble kisses -

Because you were more bloodthirsty for it

Who else kept Peter from being disgustingly squeaky clean?

You knew he thrived on thoughtless mischief

Enticing the innocent from their beds

But you coaxed out their feral corruption

Inviting them to don the hides of wild animals and scramble beneath tree roots

Matting their fur pelts with muddies spider webs

Peter pretended not to notice when some of the boys disappeared,

But he couldn’t have failed to see his minions thinning out as they aged

Slivered memories forgotten to the shadows as he raced through games of pretend

After all, it was Peter himself who made the rules,

However glittered by a misguided pixie he might be.

You liked to insist you were not meant to be tied down to the heels of a semi-mortal’s soles

You hated limits and rejoiced in going where others wouldn’t dare to follow

Conspiring in the midst shrieking laughter and pounding feet

Planting the seeds of discord between families and relationships

Gently lying to rest the blue print sketched mechanics

Of what would make those around you implode

You exulted in the idea of crumbling infrastructure

Made eyelids sleepy during playtime as you sipped absinthe out of chipped tea cups

Just a hazy figure hovering between nightmares

So indistinct and soft, many were fooled into taking your hand

Thinking you were coaxing them towards starlight

Instead of over a cliff and down past sharp teeth towards a ticking gullet

Every time you let their fingers slip from your grasp

You savored their horrified expressions

The cracks and crunch of their bones

Chuckling at their naïve notion that you would always be the one to save them

Sometimes you gave in to their pleading eyes and gaping jaws

Swooping in to save a few here and there

Treasuring the way they clung to you

Knowing that in sparing them,

You’d won more gratitude than Peter could ever hope to hold

You allowed your darkness to swell with their mistaken notions

That you could be a hero, if it suited you

You knew villainy better suited your passing fancies.

 

You used to have me constantly looking over my shoulder

Glancing into the shadowed corners of my mind I used to linger in

But I quit playing with shadows a long time ago

And you refuse to step into the light.