Drowning Wendy

by Brenda Hammack

The water was gangrenous, intense as jealousy when the mermaid pulled
at Wendy’s nightdress, and Peter, barely saved himself, remembered
why he’d wanted her, and gamely reeled her back again
into those other depths where boys refused
their peas before their puddings, and sometimes shot at things
because they were moving.

If never were as certain as the violence that made each boy a pirate in his heart,
if ever were as fierce, desirous as the laugh that turned sheer naughtiness
to fairy dust or art, the Wendy (as the lost boys styled her)
might have kept her warm and useful buoyancy,
and slipped from other arms without recourse to Peter.

She might have headed somewhere far from those who claimed to need her,
a land where girls, once lost, could band together.
They would not can, or brew such cordials as the gossips knew.
They would not quilt or play at anagrams for language
there would not be limited to letters rearranged.

They would invent their own illumined, strange,
but eloquent characters that did not beg for male translation
as fits of fairy light so often did in nations
where such whimsies were dependent on belief
or other favors.

If Wendy had, instead of drowning, set out to save herself,
she might have saved the mermaid,
who could only clutch at objects that were bloated,
sludged by water.

Such perspective as was had beneath the surface could not be reconciled
with dimensions that were glimpsed above.

One had never seen a mother for mermaids were not born or nursed as humans were.

The other could not swim outside of Neverland, and, yet, she’d learned to fly,
and though she’d never heard the sirens’ skirl,
she’d heard the Lorelei of Strauss.

And, so, when Wendy felt that tug that wasn’t current,
she might have roused herself and met those seal-like eyes
with something close to purpose.

She might have pulled away from Neverland and all its holding back,
its feigned, if frantic skirmishes.

She might have hooked that mermaid’s tail, then let her go.
She might have sank,
then surfaced.