Breathing Room

ceiling projectors and moon lights, rocks and incense, orbs and pillars, framed photos and fountains, tarot cards and fairy lights, forests and rivers, beaches and mountains.

a chessboard and a deck of cards, Scrabble, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit, colored pencils and magic markers, a literary 8-ball (in book form), and books:

Norton anthologies, Yeats, Auden, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Welty, O’Connor (Flannery, not Frank), Porter, Twain, Hawthorne, Shakespeare, Bradbury, Lawrence, Kipling, Greene, Orwell, Vonnegut, Cummings, Fitzgerald, and Eliot, among others.

a chair, a rug, some bookcases, curtains and pillows, a fan, a lamp, a makeshift bed, a Tibetan singing bowl, and art, framed and otherwise.

Over the past month, I’ve made this room my own. It was previously inhabited by others in need, when it was our spare room. I cleaned it and cleansed it for three moon cycles (shit ton of bad energy from the previous inhabitant), and the curtains and rug moved in first. More smudging and incense and crystals. I painted the white dress in here before my solstice fire. Then the chair, then bookcases and books, art and knickknacks, and the chessboard.

My husband and I have been playing chess in here since the day after my daughter called me a whore on Facebook (I had sexual relations and communication with her father; her ex-stepmother forwarded the explicit communication to her—six months after she got out of rehab). For some reason, I needed something to ground me.

Chess worked, is still working. The structure of the board, the explicit rules of engagement, the assigned roles, the patterns of movement that can’t be breached. I lost a lot that first week, but I’ve earned black several times this week, sometimes twice in a day. We play everyday, multiple games.

Technically, it’s my reading and writing room, and the animals (dog and cat) are not allowed in here (sorry furbaby lovers, but I get to have one room with no shedding)—my daughter’s cat, my grandson’s father’s dog. The cat pees on whatever textiles she can find. I’ve always loved cats, but not this one. She ran off three good cats (Eliot, Jackson, and Kevin), and she hisses at the dog (Chief) for doing things like existing. No fucking way that hellcat is coming in my room and stinking it up.

Even though it’s my room, my husband spends a lot of time in here with me, playing chess, reading, and making love. I’m fortunate that nearly twenty years into this relationship, the sex is still smoking hot, with each if us busting out new moves from time to time. One of our secrets is that we don’t have secrets. My husband is my best friend, and I tell him everything: my insecurities, my thoughts, my feelings, my crushes, my more-than-crushes, all without judgment, always with love.

The makeshift bed is a nugget couch that can be many things, including a fantastic chaise with elevated table, allowing comfort while playing. We may not be movin’ on up to the Eastside, but we’re off the floor in a space where we can breathe.