BOUND TO SHADOW

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she was frightfully sorry for Peter. "How awful!" she said, but she could not help smiling when she saw that he had been trying to stick it on with soap. How exactly like a boy!

Fortunately she knew at once what to do. "It must be sewn on," she said, just a little patronisingly.

"What's sewn?" he asked.

"You're dreadfully ignorant."

"No, I'm not."

But she was exulting in his ignorance. "I shall sew it on for you, my little man," she said, though he was tall as herself, and she got out her housewife [sewing bag], and sewed the shadow on to Peter's foot.

"I daresay it will hurt a little," she warned him.

"Oh, I shan't cry," said Peter, who was already of the opinion that he had never cried in his life. And he clenched his teeth and did not cry, and soon his shadow was behaving properly, though still a little creased.

"Perhaps I should have ironed it," Wendy said thoughtfully, but Peter, boylike, was indifferent to appearances, and he was now jumping about in the wildest glee. Alas, he had already forgotten that he owed his bliss to Wendy. He thought he had attached the shadow himself. "How clever I am!" he crowed rapturously, "oh, the cleverness of me!" PETER PAN | J. M.BARRIE

When we meet Peter Pan in the Darling children’s nursery, he is distressed to find himself detached from his shadow. Wendy’s first act of repair sets into motion a relationship between Wendy and Peter that repeats through the action of the story—the maternal Wendy practicing her art on the motherless boy. Just before the pandemic closed the prison doors to volunteers at Oregon State Penitentiary, we read Peter Pan with our Ground Beneath Us writing group. In those conversations, we considered how childhood trauma accompanies a person into adulthood. The Lost Boys were a band of motherless children who Peter gathered and protected, an apt metaphor for contemporary gang culture. For our anthology PRISONS HAVE A LONG MEMORY, I wrote an essay  detailing the conversation with the men, as I meditate on how we take flight to reach adult.

We have spent January in the shadows reading pieces that were written between the fall’s two eclipses. Some of the work came from dark, shadowy spaces, other pieces examined the shadow as a separate self. Now we consider how those shadow brings form and dimension to a deeper understanding of ourselves, like Wendy’s stitches we are bound to our shadow.

In PORTRAIT OF A NATIVE CHIEF R. Miranda describes Native stories as a passing along of wisdom: Wisdom that's timeless, spanning generations, making it eternal. One of these stories accompanied R. through his adulthood, attached like his shadow and only revealing itself late in life. As you read this piece, think about a story, a phrase, a bit of wisdom that has accompanied you? How has it impacted your thinking? Your actions?

Melissa Haley’s SHADOW dances alongside her in this poem. Our OSP reading editor Scott Bitter notes: “It all reads like a conversation with your shadow, which changes according to light intensity. I gather positivity as you describe shadow not in terms of darkness but in shades of light.”

Gina Baker’s SHADOW PROJECT exalts her faith through the divinity of light. Again, Scott Bitter brings a thoughtful response to this piece: “In nine concise sentences, you capture what many of us spend a lifetime trying to learn. Notably, we alone are unable to break free from entanglements on our own power. God’s love does not require us to be perfect. When we accept God’s forgiveness, his love and light multiples through our imperfections.”

The PonyXpress is made by many members, as we continue to grow and shape this project, we ask that you take a moment to reflect on a question that we pose or use one of our writing prompts. If you have a family member who is incarcerated, perhaps one of these pieces will open the door to a conversation about life inside. If you read something that resonates with you, please comment, and we will pass your notes along to our writers. It means the world to them that you heard their voices. This is a living document — the influence of its shadow elongates as you shine your light on it. | TDS