CARDBOARD CASTLE

Written and illustrated by Lucille Lindberg

I dream of nests, mostly. Places people might once have felt at perfect peace. Homes. Carefully crafted caverns of blood and sinew. Both interior and exterior, like a construction site, unfinished. Industrial spotlights sear the walls of my abdominal cavity. Blue tarps flap at the breeze, which does not reach me. The air in here is deceptively stagnant. Behind it waits a wall of electricity. Atmosphere wet with life. Stillness is only ever an illusion, a scale shift.

I dream of a dim kitchen. I know it is here somewhere. There are shadows but nothing to cast them. The curtain between spaces sighs deeply at my presence. I am the last resort, the breaker and the bringer. This is a museum, a gallery, a school, a church, this is where I live. And it will rot if you do not let me evict the vermin.

Everything exists here because anything could. It scarcely matters what has happened because everything could. Everything will. There is so much to see here, inside me. A whole maze to wander in the dark. The walls are wet and warm; somehow soft and I can see through the doorway to the next block. On the corner, in the rain, I am never cold. There is a place for me in the alley, I could lie down and rest if I were brave at all. There is so much to see here, behind you. Downstairs, surely, there is another world, another corner to turn.

At the bottom of my throat there is something green. A cave. A cavity. A stomach, a bed, a burrow. Forest, jungle, mossy green. Don’t ask how far back it goes because nobody knows. It interferes with my spinal column, this extra space, impossible. Backs up into my ribs somehow— I do not know how— but nobody seems to notice the bulge at the back.

At the bottom of my throat, behind the curtain of matted ivy, is a puddle. You know that it is a puddle though you cannot make out the edges of it. A whole ecosystem has sprouted up out of my belly. The puddle is green and you can see one crawfish and two leeches at the bottom; the yellow gleam of something’s teeth. In my lagoon, I am always warm beneath the water. Only open air can ever make you cold. My ocean— my puddle-lagoon— is vast, and you are still ignorant of it.

Walking feels like talking to God. Feels like the concrete is alive— which it is, you know. It is, did you know that? Just like everything else here, it breathes.

At the bottom of my throat, you will find a castle, built of cardboard boxes, carefully cut and cobbled together. It is vast and fully furnished. There should be a box of colored chalk in the foyer— make sure to sign your name on the wall. They like to keep a guest log.

At the bottom of my throat is our kitchen table.

Note:

Readers can find alternate versions of this essay on my Substack (@luslair) or in my book, “Something.”