the cardinal room

6.27.2025

I didn’t know I was dreaming. Not at first.

The light was filtering through the curtains, and shadows flickered down the hallway like passing memories. That’s when I found it: a door I’d never seen before, wedged into the corner like a book that had fallen behind the headboard.

It wasn’t locked, but hidden.

Or maybe I just never looked hard enough.
A room lost to time, tucked away behind the visible world.

I placed my hand on the doorknob and slowly opened the door.

Inside, the walls were covered in yellowed map pages. Not framed, just pasted directly to the surface like layers of paper skin.

They overlapped like a tapestry of memory: ancient coastlines, city grids, topographic sketches, and foreign alphabets etched in fading ink.

A red line ran across them all, connecting everything.

A hand-drawn path.

There were no windows, but the room glowed faintly, as if I stepped inside a paper lantern.

Sky-blue curtains with watercolor clouds hung from the ceiling like a canopy.

Sewn into the fabric were dozens of red cardinals.

Each with painted eyes and rigid wings.

Some made of paper. Others plastic.

Fake. Unmoving.

Except one.

She was olive-colored. Trembling.

Tucked behind the folds of the curtain, she shifted—

her chest pulsing, stitched in place.

I reached out, heart pounding.

Her eye blinked.

Real.

Alive.

And trapped.

I understood instantly, without words:

this bird had been here a long time.

Camouflaged by fakes.

Surrounded by imitations so convincing that even she had begun to forget she was real.

But I had found her.

I had seen her.

I carefully untied the thread and rushed her outside.

Her eyes flickered.

Her wings fluttered.

And then—she lit back up.

Fully alive.

She looked at me, and for a breathless moment,

there was recognition.

I see you.

Then she flew out of my hands and disappeared into the trees.

I woke up with vision.

With clarity.

That bird, hidden away in a forgotten room, behind survival-mode distractions and dead routines—

that was me.

The part of me buried under “being normal.”

The part that called myself a failure just because my life didn’t go the way I thought it would.

But the walls inside that room had always been covered in maps.

Maps of who I’ve been.

Where I’ve gone.

Where I’m destined to go.

And the bird,

that small, bright fragment of soul I thought I’d lost—

was still in there.

Waiting for me to find her.

This dream didn’t just remind me who I am.

It saved me.

Because I finally understood:

the only time I feel free—

the only time I feel real—

is when I call myself an artist.

When I honor that truth.

Not as a hobby.

Not as a side note.

But as an identity. A lifeline.

This isn’t about recognition.

It’s about resurrection.

When I make art, I don’t just express myself.

I return to myself.

And every time I do,

I feel a little more alive.