By Gabriel Lyra
Pointy ears as its grayish mustache, eyes so green, vicious, staring at me like emeralds lightning the ceiling of a dark cave, mirroring my iris as if my body was just a mere abstract concept while the soul solid as a rock. The tiny ruler doesn’t want to be touched, especially by the hands of intruders to his realm between four huge walls, so he deflects fingers as fumes running freely to the sky, smoothly swerving every single hand coming his way while his dense black fur dances around the legs of wooden chairs and tables, near the fragile vases on the top shelves of my long corridor; The mysterious and confident creature still doesn’t quite know his true name; he once named himself wind, when his pawns were unafraid to walk through the streets and buildings; Months later, he named himself fog, when his pelage started to disguise in the dark to avoid tumults; When I found him he started naming himself dream, and that may be his true name until this very day Since all he does in the mornings is wait upon the bottom of the gigantic window in my living room while his olive eyes look at the sky, wishing to go back to the time when he used to run freely looking for shadows, rainbows in a broad never-ending city; And all he does at dawn is wish for it to be the night in which he remembers how he used to yowl like a mountain lionto the bright Moon above. His true name is still a fading thing, but he lets people approach him as “cat,” or more specifically in my household as “Leaf.”