Each midnight, you remember how the dragon won you. How he showed you his scars, his still bleeding wounds gained from swallowing curses from the beaks of random ravens. Now you Struggle to recall the Gorgons too had wings. Now you think that gig wouldn’t be half-bad— to roam free, free to sow terror, then ascend beyond any creature’s need to tame you.
Maura Alia Badji is a poet/writer/artist/intuitive energy healer/ESL teacher. She is and identifies as, a disabled and multiracial woman, Her heritage includes Sicilian, African, Middle Eastern, Asian, Latinx, Scot-Irish, and Southeast Asian ancestry. Her poems and essays have appeared in Aeolian Harp, The Deaf Poets Society, The Delaware Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Cobalt, The Phoenix Soul, The Skinny Poetry Journal, WELTER, The Good Men Project, This City Is a Poem, Barely South Review, The Healing Woman, Liberated Muse, Night Ballet Press, and others. Maura lives in Virginia Beach with her teen son, Ibrahim.