Wonderland

The Day I Heard My Name.

Author’s Note

This is a personal piece.

A story about losing Wonderland, rebuilding it, and discovering that some things never truly leave us.

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Wonderland

❦

When I was little,
I was Alice.
I lived in Wonderland.

I spoke with flowers,
played with fairies,
saw Cheshire Cats
where everyone else
saw plastic toys.

One day,
someone asked me:
What is my greatest fear?
I answered:
Leaving Wonderland.

The next morning,
I heard a voice.

“Andrea.”
“Andrea.”

But that isn’t my name,
I thought.

“Wake up.”
“Andrea, wake up.”

Oh.
Right.
That is my name.

My mother stood at the door.
“Andrea, we’re leaving.”
And when I turned around,
everything was in ruins.

Wonderland,
withered.

The Cheshire Cat.
The White Rabbit.
My friends.
Motionless.
Turning slowly to ash.

I remember very little
of the day they told me
I could not stay.

The Queen of Hearts laughed
while I felt the edge of a knife
glide gently across my throat.

The day I left Wonderland.
The day my parents
chose different roads.

The day I heard my name
and woke up.
I spent years believing
the story ended there.

That day,
something inside me died.

❦

Since then,
I have lived my life
walking the thin line
between reality
and my reality.

Every summer.
Every goodbye.
I became
a little less whole.

Seven.
Ten.
Twelve.
Fourteen.

Each summer,
I left another piece behind.

The world within me
is kinder.

There,
I rebuild Wonderland
stone by stone.

There,
nobody expects anything of me.

The colors return,
slowly.
Then the music.
Then the dreams
that only exist
when I close my eyes.

Little by little,
I planted entire gardens
far from the noise
of who I was supposed to be.

I built a palace.
A castle.
An Eden
inhabited by tiny fairies
who carry me away.

I spend my life
traveling between two worlds.

Though a voice
still whispers:

Don’t go back.
Close the door.
Let it disappear.

What dies once
cannot bloom again.

Dead soil
does not flower.

❦

Even in adulthood,
I kept saying goodbye.

I ran.
Far away.

Far enough
that nobody could reach me.

And still,
every farewell
swallowed another piece of me.

What is life
if not a long
and painful goodbye?

I thought running
would hurt less.

Instead,
it hurt more.
Burned more.
Because I no longer had
a home
to return to.

When I looked behind me:
a graveyard.
A hell full of bodies.
The remains
of every version of myself
that never made it home.

Still,
I walked.
We walked.
All of us.
However we could.
Half-broken.
Barely.

Until, somehow,
we found one another.

Physically?
Emotionally?
I still don’t know.

But here we are.
Here I am.
Still dying.

Still learning
how to hold myself.

❦

Before the wasteland
of my shadow,
only a breath away,

I hear a piano
in the distance.

Just beyond the abyss.
Hungry.

The void that devours
hope,
wonder,
love,
faith.

And there,
in a small patch of earth,
two tiny green leaves.

A single stem.
Small.
Steady.

Blooming
inside me.

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