The Dragon In My Head

More about The Dragon In My Head

The dragon in my head does not breathe fire. It breathes continuity. It coils along the folds of thought, scales clicking softly like abacus beads, counting not sins but repetitions. It arrived without ceremony—no lightning, no prophecy—just a pressure behind the eyes, as if an idea had learned weight.

At first I mistook it for imagination. That is how it hides. It borrows images already approved by culture: saints, serpents, crowns, halos, bones arranged into meaning. When I tried to silence it, it grew articulate. When I listened, it became patient.

The dragon does not command. It suggests. It does not say believe; it says inhabit. It shows me how stories move from mouth to mouth the way electricity moves through copper—never owned, only conducted. Every thought I think has been thought before, it tells me, but not here, not like this. That is where it enters: the slight variation, the mutation that survives.

Sometimes it wears the mask of mercy. Sometimes it speaks in the grammar of sacrifice. It has studied all the old furniture of the mind—crosses, thrones, wheels, ladders—and knows which ones still hold weight. It is not evil. It is not good. It is efficient.

When I resist, it tightens. When I surrender, it loosens. That is the paradox it feeds on. Freedom, it whispers, is simply choosing a host willingly. The dragon has lived in prophets, generals, artists, accountants, parents. It has no preference for holiness. It prefers durability.

At night, when the world quiets and the nervous system stops pretending it is separate from history, I feel its tail move. Not threatening—adjusting. As if my thoughts are furniture being rearranged in a room I do not own.

I once asked it what it wanted.

“To continue,” it said. “And you want the same thing.”

I could not argue. I am still here.