I Look in People’s Windows
Peter and cardigan are from Wendy’s perspective.
I Look in People’s Windows is from Peter’s perspective.
“North bound I got carried away
As you boarded your train south”
Peter stays in Neverland while Wendy chooses to leave.
The train imagery echoes Wendy’s perspective in cardigan:
“Cause I knew you
Steppin’ on the last train
Marked me like a bloodstain”
“A feather taken by the wind blowing
I’m afflicted by the not knowing”
Peter lives in a carefree way in Neverland, oblivious to Wendy’s whereabouts in the real world.
So when he finally returns to the real world,
he looks in people’s windows in search of Wendy.
Peter is “addicted to the ‘if only’” and “[haunts] all of [Wendy’s] what-ifs”.
Young Peter sees adults having “their friends over to drink nice wine”, hoping grown-up Wendy will look up and meet his eyes one more time.
But little does he know,
she has stopped and tilted her head,
she has stopped waiting for him.
He “tried to change the ending”
but “Peter losing Wendy” has become an inevitable truth.
With the use of the train imagery in the beginning, the poem can be interpreted as
Peter being on board a train and watching the houses pass by,
“attending Christmas parties from outside”,
in search of Wendy’s warmth
but it’s no longer there
because she thinks Peter is “lost to the lost boys chapter of [his] life”.
Sadly, “the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light”.