It was over before it even began.
You knew that,
and so did he.

Peter Pan, Peter Pan, Peter Pan.
You observed him.
You looked at him and saw the happiness painted
across his face.
Those dilated pupils enclosed by amber discs of color
beckoned you.

With his eyes ablaze with the twinkle of youth,
He begged you, pleaded with you,
to come away with him to his magical kingdom.
To Neverland.
A sprinkle of pixie dust was
all it took to make dreams come true.
And no such thing as reality
when everything was pretend.

Teaching you how to fly,
he taught you about the anatomy of wings.
Taught you that belief is all it
takes to fly.

Do you remember the way the fiery sparks of light ricocheted off each other?
Dancing, in the irises of his amber eyes
as he peered up at the twinkling stars?

They meant something to him.
The problem was, they didn’t mean anything to you.

Selfish and stubborn,
Submerged in the contradictions of youth,
you both refused to compromise.
You both wanted forever but
weren’t willing to give up anything to have it.

You finally managed to admit defeat,
even though you’d known it was inevitable.
The two of you would never work.
And this realization penetrated the delicate
cracks of your soul.

There you sat.
A translucent body of glass,
shattered.
Broken in pieces on the floor
like a hollow china doll
tipped recklessly over the edge of a table.

Now, there was no pretending.
The pain that seared through you,
cutting into you,
like a jagged double-edged sword,
echoed and seeped out from the dark
hollow, depths of your soul. 

The relentless bulbous droplets slid freely over your smooth skin
as the pain you had so skillfully suppressed, surfaced.
Escaped.
Your lungs tried to inhale air that
didn’t seem to exist.
Your injured heart, too heavy to be supported,
had fallen and crumbled into pieces,
invisible shards of glass on an infinite, bottomless floor.

Paralyzed,
Your trembling legs transformed into burdensome cement.

You felt the ground underneath you.
It was cold and hard.
But it was real.