I SPOKE TO A DRAGON

Cover art designed by Captain Kente

I was but a kid with a dollar and a dream. Whispering about ghosts and wild pickle berries. I lived in a concrete jungle, where none cared for none. I wasn’t an orphan like the other kids on the street but most often than not I felt like one. The sky was always dark and the wind heavy. There was always some sort of trouble amongst the kids and the police never bothered. Days flew like the kites we steal from the rich kids to play with and yet we never flew anywhere. I had dreams but only a dollar. It seemed like a lot sometimes when I see all the things that cost below a dollar but whenever we move into the city, I am useless. I’m I useless?

I was but a kid with no hopes of bluer skies and yellow bread. Strawberry cakes and dark juices to quench my thirst. I worked the sun like a friend, ever tanned when I needed it not. I lived from hand to hand, hopefully to find something to push into my mouth at the end of the day. The adults could care less, they either saw through me or avoided me like the black plague. I was the social cast out, the kid without any hope or dream of tomorrow. The one they point hands at and warn their kids about. What am I to do, when the entire world is against me?

I was a kid with no smile from Cupid. All was loved, all were cherished, yet I was skipped. I saw others getting adopted and sent off to happy homes and loving families, yet none for me, so I run. Yes I run. As far as my feet could take me, and as hard as my little insides could allow. Into the darkness, I ended with the kids with nothing to offer but just an art. An art to take from as many as we can and be better. I remember I was taught it’s called stealing, but out here, we called it pay. After all we did all the hard jobs for the rich people. Cleaned their homes, swept their floors, washed their dotty places, the things we did, yet we never got our due. So we collect our pay whenever and wherever we can. Is it bad to fight for our pay?

I was a kid with nothing more than just an imagination and friends in the wind. I listened to them in the middle of the night, when my cardboard wasn’t thick enough to shield me from the rain or in the afternoon, when the sun was burning my face off. I often created things I saw on the looking screen. The one, the rich people have in their houses. It was big and things came on it when they touched a stick. It wasn’t a stick, I had been told so many times, yet I couldn’t remember the name. It was a re- something I think. Well my friends were super nice and we all poor I must add. There was the kid who only spent a dollar every day and dreamt of nothing but kites and flying away. There was the kid who wanted not to be pointed at as a warning, but be the one pointing at someone else. As sad and broken as that sounds, that is all he wanted. There was the kid with no love, who prayed and cried so hard to be loved. Just a roof over his head, and someone to make him breakfast, so he doesn’t have to take anymore payments. Then there was the ghosts that whispered into my ears, telling me I had to move on. ‘No one is waiting for you’, they would say. I would shout at them and wait, right on the street, where I spoke a dragon and got burnt. The street that harboured my dreams and my entire life. So tell me you over there, what should I tell the dragon, in case we talk again?