I looked out my window once.
I saw a reflection.
I saw a dragon once
She was mighty
Oh you should have seen her, she was beautiful
I don’t mean the type of beautiful that would draw the average interest
but the beauty that defies standards

She had a deep red scales and a flame wrapped heart
her size robust and unladylike
oh she was potent
she could stare and kill
this dragon,
not my dragon
no-one’s dragon
her own dragon
I watched as she,
She danced through forests
set ablaze hearts
flew into Arcadian pastures and still returned
each night to tell me where she’d gone
I do remember she left for a while,
before going she’d told me there were men who wanted her skin
I was young I thought, ‘Alright, fly free.’
but I didn’t know
I couldn’t imagine
that one day these men
would seize her
slice off her wings
and cage her fiery mouth
clip her tail and say, ‘Stay, sit still’
I couldn’t figure how they’d caught her
why they caught her
then I realized they’d never seen her dance
or speak her mind with flames of joy or love or hate
or soar like Daedalus
but now just now I have seen her crash like Icarus
and it pains me to see the once brilliant, extraordinary dragon be captured
and enclosed
I see now the men take her scales off one by one and i can’t help but shed a tear
I see
I see
I see
her freshly exposed skin now feels what humans call blood

This dragon has told me before she has never been wounded
she has not known bleeding till now and i ache
I wished so badly that this one dragon
this one living thing need not know of hurt
fly free and be left lone
but greedy men with sticky hands with beauty gawking eyes and gaping mouths
need
need
need more
more
more
posses ideals that say content does not come to men and to leave unscathed is synonymous with insultry
to leave something beautiful, pure is to deeply offend
something beautiful has not been caressed with the loving grip of cages and blood
has not seen how we are better for your degradation
does not know of utilitarianism
because your scales may be sold
because this is a system of mercantilism
and we men are artisans
we are in a market of merchants
to have pockets of coins
and I have shelves of bread
and my father said he hunts
I have not seen any livestock
now I wonder
where my father keeps his catch.