Article by Kanitta Cheah Art by Kristopher Ligtenberg
There is a house in my mind. It’s unclear if I am the house or if the world is the house, but there is a house in my mind and it never ends. I dream in the rooms of this house. I told you about it once and you wanted to know more, so I said: I used to wonder how I knew all my dreams took place here because I could not recognize any one room, and I could not describe any exterior at all. I know that somewhere inside there is a forest, and inside the forest there is a cathedral. I have seen vast wooden ballrooms, with skateboard decks as decor; shallow linoleum hallways with evidence of flooding; piles and piles of unidentifiable junk in twisted rooms with no visible walls; marbled waterslides in rocky caverns through some kind of museum; and only once, a porch, a wooden-columned landing directly on the open ocean. And still, I know. It is all the same house. Unless my dreams do not all occur in the same mind. How many other rooms are there inside? What is there left to discover, to uncover? Hello, hello, is there anyone else there? If there are no answers then why be curious at all? I think about running through the house and tearing down the walls; if I don’t find answers maybe it will stop the questions. But I don’t think the house would like that very much. Some things are better left alone. (Am I better left alone?) The thought makes me scream.
Earthshattered, I have to run: across holy water and blessed pines, no solid ground to be found, I recall the green cathedral, the shadowed forest shrine, its arms of clouds and cedar twisting into something I could call an archway. A secret room I’ve never dreamed of, a hollow chamber in the heart of the house, a place whose walls sing with the voices of sacred stones, a song I could neither replicate nor recall.
In my dear green cathedral, the wind sometimes blew with such strength that it took my breath away; my body was shocked by the world saying here, it’s been too long, honey, take what you need from me. It was only air, but I could not breathe it in. I tried to inhale and my body sang with the voices of sacred bones.
I want to die having laughed so loud and smiled so big that evidence of my joy lingers in the lines on my face. I want to die having known I’ve smiled a smile so secret that only one other could recognize it as their own. I want to die knowing my name was safe in your mouth. I hope you know yours is safe in mine.
If I could be a space so blessed as to hold your being, then I think I would be able to take a breath and smile a secret smile. Would you share it with me?
In my dear green cathedral, there was a flowered seat. I have sat down in this chair and cried. (I cry easily these days.) Am I crazy to think the cathedral cried with me? From the faraway arches, foggy cedars, and firs flung water on my head, cold, crisp. Every time I come to the cathedral I wonder if I’ve been here before. I know I have. It feels the same but it always looks different, and sometimes it doesn’t “look” at all.
Only in waking have I felt it, the aching for another presence. Maybe that’s why the house shapeshifts when I sleep. It is trying to become the world, trying to become a companion, trying to become a memory, trying to fill a hole in my heart, to sit on the throne of flowers of its own creation. This is not how I was meant to grow. Is this not how I was meant to grow? Underground, I’ve been hiding, sucking water off of roots, living on scraps, and the cathedral has become moldy, mildewy – but it maintains its motherly barrier between me and the sky.
I am still sacred. I am still scared. And I suppose this is what I needed all along, for someone like you to love me for being sacred, to love me for being scared. To love the mind and body, to love the house and the cathedral, and all its residents. To sit down and rest in a flowered seat and find that it is home. Before I fall asleep, I like to dream in the evening, when the stars light its arches. If I were a cathedral, then you could take a step into me and know that something special had occurred within me. The chaos of the surrounding house doesn’t bother you. The way I cry on your throne makes you hold me. You were made to sit here and I was made to hold you.