Sparkles

My mother kept a little jar of sparkles on her desk. One day, when I finally asked her what it was for, she launched into a whole story about someone named Peter Pan and fairy dust and some other things that I can’t remember anymore, but I got so caught up in the story that I never remembered to make sure that she answered my question about the jar.

But when I was helping her move to Florida, and she told me to go pack up her office, I saw the jar again. Now, I was in college by then, but I still didn’t know why she kept that jar on her desk. It wasn’t like she ever used it — it just sat there, filled to the brim with little gold particles.

When I picked up the jar to pack it with her other knick-knacks, though, the cork came out. It wasn’t like I was trying to get it to come out. It just… popped. And written in teeny-tiny letters on the bottom of the cork were the words “Because everyone deserves a little piece of Neverland.” Some of the sparkles spilled onto a book when the cork came out, and I chased it around the room for a good fifteen minutes before I gave up. It finally ran into the ceiling fan and stopped flying about two days later. That book still has a hard time staying on the shelf.

Yes, it’s the same bottle that’s on my desk now.

You want to see what it does?

Well, I suppose there’s no point in keeping something if you don’t use it… I never understood that part of my mother.