Public domain illustration from Barrie, J.J. Peter and Wendy ; Margaret Ogilvy. New York, Scribner, 1912. Accessed from Internet Archive Book Images.
What else can I say?
Polished, perfected, they are dead. Not dead like a shell or a stone, an object desirable enough to grasp and carry home, fascinating in your hand.
No, more like a fish dead on the beach. Silvery and dehydrated. They simply accumulate.
What do I do with it? With one of them? With seventeen?
I look. Change line endings, take away a phrase, add it back.
Give me some of that fairy dust, Tinkerbelle. Because I believe in this poem. And the rest of them, too.
They want to fly.