Otherworldly Dragon by Leticia Toraci

Your eyes, a lake of molten steel I want to jump into.

Your heart, a dimension so strange.

You love all creatures under the sky,

So perhaps you might love me.

Can you love a dragon?

I’m otherworldly.

My hands, claws, flicker between six and three fingers.

Fierce and uncertain of their own humanity.

I don’t know how to communicate with these humans.

Your words though give me hope.

Between worlds, realms and dimensions,

I’m aware,

Fiercely aware,

Of my isolation.

Between feeling small and ashamed,

Powerful and distracted,

Flying with the membranous wings of a fallen angel,

My astral body remains entire with the sustenance of your words.

I’ll coat my body with the molten steel of your eyes

And my armor will be everlasting.

Bio

Leticia Toraci is a Brazilian freelance writer, poet and artist who lives with her husband, her two sons and a moody cat in South Germany. She has a degree in Master of Food Science from the University of Reading, England. As a child, she won an Honorable Mention for two of her short stories in the Sao Paulo Public Servants Contest in 1986. She participated in theater in Campo Mourao, Brazil, where she recited several of her poems. She has also had art exhibits in Regensburg, Aschaffenburg and Munich, Germany. Together with other authors, she has published three short stories in three anthologies: The Dragon's Rocketship Presents: The Ship's Log, Sins of the Future (Sins of Time #2), and Writers in Lockdown.

Author's note

"Otherworldly Dragon" is about hope and the strength of spiritual love, about how one person can be inspired by the words of another, even if this other person isn't physically present in that person's life.