We Didn't Become Homesick

We didn’t believe Wendy’s stories: about a boy who never grew up, unaccountable for his own shadows, avoiding consequence in perpetuity?

Never.

We didn’t possess the processing and coping mechanisms when the story came to life, whisking us all away from reality, as if floating, dissociating beyond the world as we once knew it.

We didn't know if we were in a dream or a nightmare.

We didn't know how this happened.

We didn’t know where we were going, what Neverland might really look like, nor how to name that fear, disgust, and shame in our bellies for what it really was.

We didn’t understand his compulsions, like needing to rewrite so much: why chasing shadows—erasing shadows and bigger men’s footprints that came before—was so important to him.

We didn’t understand why: the Paris Accords, USAID never hurt anybody.

We didn’t hurt our girls.

We didn’t trust those Boys, didn’t like seeing them have a place to roam freely, wildly, crashing into crowds, calling names, mocking the original inhabitants of our world; emboldened, so, so emboldened, those Boys.

We didn’t build a wall, though. No, really, we didn’t.

We didn’t demo an institution’s wing, like a mamabird's appendage clipped, snapped, destroyed.

We didn’t learn what a Muslim Ban meant; why immigrants from some places were deemed better than those from others; what Islam or southern borders had to do with anything, besides, well, what we obviously feared they had to do with.

We didn’t know how to say no.

We didn’t take the new job.

We didn’t move.

We didn’t settle down, buy a home, procreate—not because we necessarily wanted to, but rather, as a side effect of playing house while stuck in Neverland.

We didn’t have to watch ourselves grow-up stunted on an island overrun by children, wearing our pajamas and becoming our parents, seeing ourselves reflected in pools of water inhabited by crocs; the sharp bite of introjection, the expanding ripples of skipped stones, purling repeating patterns across the water, like tree rings.

We didn’t shut down.

We didn’t panic.

We didn’t.

We didn’t fly.

We didn’t travel.

We didn’t zoom off; or go anywhere, really.

We didn’t stop wearing lace bras or itchy business casual; we didn’t miss crowded public transit beneath swinging handles, consuming the auras of fellow passengers; we didn’t wipe down groceries or loop masks over our ears, letting them dangle like a pirate’s flag from our faces as we charged our own sidewalks, our entire existence hooked from a string, protected by breathable fabric. Or not.

We didn’t return to our office when the planet reopened, only to find dusty, decaying matter where potted plants—once thriving and tended upon our windowsills—lay.

We didn’t strain in our marital relationships within the confines of stale air and too much screen time and resentment, file complaints with the Bureau of WTF; we simply tucked freshly folded laundry back into bureaus of drawers, popped little generics down our gullets.

We didn’t put signs outside our windows.

We didn’t see the Bureau of Land Management lose its acronymial grounding; oh, what a silly abbreviation it was, given how the Boys in charge so blatantly mocked the very original land managers native to this place.

We didn’t forget whose back this place was built upon, pretend those times were great, and have cause to say their names, for they were great, and so, so mattered.

We didn’t exactly doom-scroll.

We didn’t know what to make of Tink’s sparkly filters, seeing as how she never actually said anything: what was she supposed to represent in the story, anyway?

We didn’t feel the empowerment of letting our hair spin silver, of literally burning our bras and secretarial wardrobe; glad, at least, to be rid of our old pin-up, button-down corsets that made it hard to breathe.

We didn’t breathe rage, and rage, and rage, watching a woman testify from Room 216, hearing a woman insulted, feeling our autonomy contract and collapse in courts, when all we wanted was the chance to dilate our eyes at the truth, to swordfight the pirate boys off our backs and planks; them with their tiny swords, us, with curettes.

We didn’t drown when they cut our vessels’ planks and protections away from our bodies, forcing us to jump ship and row our little lifeboats towards some unseeable shore, asking ourselves, “but, doesn’t it feel, despite all our paddling, as if we’re going backwards?”

We didn’t say “not again” about school drop-offs feeling so final; so foreboding, so sacred; bearing our babies in our arms for what could be the last time, every time.

We didn’t expect they’d be so violent when we asked them to please, consider what matters most, just for a second, if you’d please be so amenable: aren’t you pro-life, after all?

We didn’t change the temperatures on our iceboxes; consequently, we didn’t see everything frostbitten, freezer-burned; everyone cringing at the mention of ice.

We didn’t understand why the Boys didn’t want to let others on the island—which they too came to, like wandering children in hopes of a better story for themselves—and it made us sad and bored, having to watch them misbehave, just waiting for them to wear themselves out or die, really.

No, we didn’t understand why they didn’t understand irony, hypocrisy, decency.

We didn’t even really mind the theatrical pirate boldly decked out in flamboyant red drag; we always sided with the ones in drag, wanted to hear them read and sing us stories.

We didn't pay mind to the crocs.

We didn’t freeze eggs successfully; we were too frozen ourselves with worry about the world—if we’d ever get off this island, or if maybe the water would rise so high, it would overcome us all—before we could talk about eggs, babies, science, the future.

We didn’t see other kids from the nursery executed, like Rene in her boat trying to leave, Alex trying to nurse another who got hurt in the games these savage little Lost Boys play.

We didn’t see Kennedy’s name taken off-center; placed second in his own legacy; we didn’t know how to reckon with marbleized defilement feeling as cold as images of schoolchildren being handcuffed, detained.

We didn’t misunderstand what an old birthday card meant, those “wonderful secrets every day brought” released from inside the sealed envelope; exposed, accounted for, not so wonderful at all.

We didn’t understand why we didn’t see the bad ones handcuffed, detained.

We didn’t hold our breath.

We didn’t write stories about how mad it all made us: the headlines, the misinformation former friends and family click-shared, the insanity of it all.

We didn’t think this is what Wendy meant: living being such an awfully big adventure, when really, it felt more like a big, awful one.

We didn’t remember, was it dying, she meant?

We didn’t remember: how long ago had it been when she first told us this story, a fable, a myth, a fairytale with a moral ending?

We didn’t roll our eyes when the First Gentleman played saxophone in the warm, welcoming East Wing, melodies summoning indigo light and pixie dust and magic; we kind of liked it, really—appreciated it, even—turned those tunes into our own lullabies, something comfortable to put us at ease, safe in our own beds.

We didn't pettily stream "Becoming" on in the background on repeat for weeks, because that is what it came to, our island fever.

We didn’t feel stranded and trapped in Neverland, even though it made us sick, really, and we longed—like broken, lost animals; like the homesick—for our own beds, back in our own homes, or whatever those memories meant anymore.

We didn’t wonder, what if Wendy never told us those stories, never planted the seed of a boy who avoided every consequence leading us away from home?

We didn’t, really, we didn’t.

Here’s the hook. We didn’t with him; we did with her. We were babies in nightgowns, being taken from our nurseries for a ride we never, never asked to be on. We were so tired, still, waiting to rest our weary heads, to sleep, to wonder if it wasn’t all a very, very bad dream.

Oh, say we didn’t Wendy, please say we didn’t, say never, ever, ever.

We didn’t subvert history.

We didn’t, did we?