Dear Friend

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Dear Friend,

I am finally writing to you from New York. I had wanted to do it for a long time, but as you can imagine, one always looks for a moment propitious to the heart and to the imagination these days, when everything is marked by trains, by new appointments, or more simply by the search for food.

Tonight New York appeared to me in a dream. There was a great, fascinating dragon lying in a large, swampy, lunar lagoon. He looked at me furtively with his large watery eyes, a little languid and a little curious. I didn’t understand his feelings or his expression, but he didn’t scare me. More than anything, I felt curiosity for this old and majestic animal.

I tried to approach him, to attract his attention toward me, like an impertinent child looking to catch the interest of an absentminded wanderer, lost in who knows what old memory, on the edge of one of the many possible roads he is following. His appearance fascinates me, because it lets me imagine his many journeys, past adventures, and dense inner turmoil. But now you see him wandering tired and indifferent in a time that has left him disillusioned and alone.

The dragon, after having scrutinized me a bit, said to me, “Why don’t you go up and take a ride on my shoulders?”

A long mane of large, green, pointed spines sat between his shoulders. The spines were endless rows of skyscrapers, many skylines lined up one behind the other. They moved in a thousand different directions with every mighty movement of the beast. It was a real rollercoaster, alive! Not like the ones you pay for, where the duration and the fun are already established, and where you know exactly what awaits you before you can get your feet back on solid ground. On those rides, you can already calculate what you will feel at the first hairpin bend, learn to slow your heart when it is wheeling uphill or even stop it when your whole body is upside down. Once you are riding the dragon, who knows what fate awaits you!? You could slide up and down having a crazy fun time, until the last arbitrary backlash of the beast sends you back to the real world, or . . . maybe you would not re-emerge!

Clearly, now you’d like to know if I rode the monster tonight or not, but I won’t tell you. Maybe one of these nights you can come for a ride too; who knows if we’ll meet again!?

Love,
Margherita

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Margherita Autuori was born in Calatafimi-Segesta in Sicily, Italy. She speaks English, Italian, and Spanish. She is a chemist with a strong passion for literature and all kinds of stories. When, last year, her husband received a job offer in New York, they decided to move here from Barcelona and enjoy a new experience together. Now she is happily studying English at the Tompkins Square branch of the New York Public Library, with her teacher, Sandra Ham.