Lost Girls Quartet:

Wendy, 25-years-old

Dear Peter,
It was never like this with you.
Never knew I would grow to be this.
To be where thimble kisses have no place.
I now have hips and breasts,
have kissed and been kissed
and licked and sucked
and so many more things in so many places
you have never known.
I taught you things Peter.
I have never stopped teaching.
Lost boys become lost men
and I have so much more to show you now.
I now own the window you once flew into.
I own the whole damn estate.
I own my life.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been downsides.
Menstruation can be a pain.
I suspect this alone would make someone like you
never want to leave childhood,
but in truth with all your magic
you were never the strongest of us.
That was Tinkerbell.
Then there is the hoot and holler
of the men my age.
They can be aggressive when they are drunk.
But I know how to take care of myself,
being with you taught me that.
When one tried to take what would normally be given
I told him:
“Motherfucker, I’ve fought pirates with hook hands
That drunk frat boy stuff don’t mean shit to me”
and then I dropkicked him in the face.
But Peter, sexuality is a gift.
Responsibility is not as dire as you made it out to be.
Getting older can be beautiful.
You should see my parents now.
The way my mother kisses my father
softly, sweetly, every night before she goes to bed.
The way they have grown weird together,
stopped caring what everyone else thinks of them.
They are like children again.
I think you really love someone
when you can't wait to be old with them.
I want to be old with you.
Peter life is magnificent.
Please, leave your Neverland behind.
You are missing all of this.

Tinkerbell Writes Her Only - and Final - Love Letter to Peter Pan

Dear Peter,
I loved you once.
I don’t know if you ever knew that.
I loved Wendy too.
The depth of my love knows no gender.
No restriction of monogamy.
Peter, I was the one who told her to leave.
I told her things I never told you.
Taught her things you would not believe.
If only you would have bothered to ask.
You always thought I was mute you silly boy.
She needed to leave Peter.
Just as I need to stop being your little fantasy girl.
Do you have any clue how long fairies live?
I’ve been alive for centuries.
These eyes have seen empires come and go.
The things we could have done together.
Have you ever seen a fairy orgasm?
It’s like a sunburst.
Peter, there have been t-shirts made of my image.
I am an icon.
You are an afterthought.
You have no magic without me
and I have been protecting you for years.
There is no fairy dust left here for you.
No happy thought will save you now.
They are coming for you Peter.
I hope you have learned to run.

Dorothy Gale 3AM Hollywood Boulevard

My whole life I have only ever loved three men.
I know that must seem hard to believe after all these years,
but it’s true.
Though I have known straw men,
men whose insides I splintered and left
crumbled and broken on the floor,
who I burned to cinders.
It is true I miss them most of all.
And what of tin men?
Those cold metal-suited men who watch this sing and dance.
Who might have rusted under my wet.
I suspect not one of them ever found a heart.
There have been so many cowardly lions.
Scared little boys hiding in men’s clothing, there have been legion,
and so many types besides.
There have been poppies to help me sleep,
and a whole multi-colored plethora of horses and drinks.
I have been to all sides of the rainbow now.
Auntie Em passed the spring I turned 18.
I left Kansas for LA when Toto died two months later.
Spent the first few months searching for traces
of my two absent parents.
I lost my virginity to a 26-year-old bartender on New Year’s Eve.
That was over 15 years ago.
I now own 13 pairs of ruby slippers.
No matter how many times I click my heels I never seem to get home.
I am writing this on a bar napkin.
Drank too many martinis and have no yellow brick road
to lead me home to my studio in the Valley.
Eventually some cowardly lion will offer me a ride home.
I will wake up in an unfamiliar room in the morning.
I will repeat this the next day and the next day.
I am well paid for this song and dance I do but I am tired.
I never thought I would miss Kansas as much as I do in this moment.
Never thought I would ever say those words again
yet here I am chanting them like a mantra:
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like...

Alice at 50 Writes to her Old Friend Cheshire

I started to agree with the people who tell me it never happened.
I think it’s easier that way.
They say story, adolescent fantasy, drug-induced frenzy hallucination.
Your floating grin, no body, no face, just eyes and teeth,
substitution for some face I’ve not allowed myself to see.
Years of therapy tell me you are some sort of coping mechanism,
the caterpillar a metaphor for some childhood trauma,
a giant smoking phallic symbol.
The mad-hatter is a drunk father, a overly touchy-feely neighbor.
The looking-glass some sort of body acceptance metaphor.
The jabberwocky the horror in my own reflection,
all different faces for something they tell me I refuse to face.
They say all the drink me, eat me should have clued me in.
They don’t know.
There is no metaphor here, no coping mechanism,
nothing funny in my father’s tea and cake, no pedophilic neighbor.
I am not in denial about anything.
I was there.
You know Cheshire, they never believe you.
I have a daughter.
Since having her I have learned I am not mad, not crazy.
They have simply forgotten how to be children.
Forgotten a story can exist simply for the sake of its own wonder.
Her father only stayed until I told him.
He took her from me when she started to tell the stories too.
They tell me you are not real.
That this cold grey I have known for so long is the real world.
That this loneliness is of my own doing,
but my child was the only thing I ever created
as beautiful as the Wonderland I once knew and she was taken from me.
So tell me how is this world, better than yours?
At least there, they only ever wanted to take my head.
In Wonderland, I was confused, maybe frightened at times,
but never broken.
They tell me I am broken Cheshire.
The white rabbit has been dead for so long now.
The last time I saw him alive his watch had cracked.
He was crying Cheshire.
Knew he had somewhere to be
but had no sense of when he needed to be there,
whether he had gone there already.
He reminded me so much of my father then.
They tell me he was.
That I should stop hiding behind the stories, to grow up,
but this adult world is so ugly.
I miss your smile.
I miss my friends.
The rabbit hole is gone now, or lost,
I only know I can’t find it.
So I started digging.
I buried the white rabbit in the yard.
There are so many things buried here.
I am falling now.
I’ve been falling for so long.
I know eventually I will stop.
I know I am coming home.