Sister Dragons

by Peer G. Dudda

Sister dragons, your beautiful wings!
They cringe, call your flesh scaly,
Ignorant of your graceful flight,
A dance spun full of truth.
My wings were chopped off,
An attempt to ground me under heel:
Keep me timid, keep me docile, full of fear, full of shame,
Taught me to cut myself every time growth buds appeared.

Sister dragons, never did it occur to me
That like you, I could put down the knife and rasp,
Put away the gauze and antiseptic,
Let the wings grow back,
Join you in flight,
Until now.

Watch these gracile wings grow.
One day they will spread, gossamer membranes ready
To push against air and fly home.

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Peer G. Dudda writes to shed light on shadowed spaces and to name forgotten ideas, living at the intersection of multiple liminal states that coalesce in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Peer's first publication appears in Stone Telling's debut issue.

Read Peer's discussion of this poem over at the Roundtable!

Photography: adapted from The Dragon Cloud, by Luis Argerich.