The Room with the Blue Ceiling
For weeks, Milan had been dreaming of a room he had never entered in waking life. The walls were gray, but the ceiling glowed a deep, calming blue. He knew there was a box in one corner that he didn't want to open. In his dreams, he often wandered around it, sometimes for days, sometimes only minutes.
One evening at a reading, he met a therapist who spoke about "shadow work"—the courage to look at the parts of ourselves that we hide. He told her about the room. She smiled gently. "The box is yours," she said. "But only when you open it will the dream stop calling you."
The following night, Milan was back in the room. He knelt before the box. His hands trembled as he lifted the lid. Inside lay a small boy, not afraid, not angry—just waiting. Milan recognized himself immediately. The boy held a notebook in his hand, one Milan had kept when he was eight, before tearing it up and throwing it away.
He sat down next to him, and together they leafed through pages filled with drawings, secret wishes, and short poems. "Why did you leave me here?" the boy asked quietly. Milan didn't answer right away. Instead, he put his arm around him. "Because I thought you were making me weaker," he said finally. "But you're the part that reminds me."
When Milan awoke, he knew the room was no longer waiting for him. But when he closed his eyes, he could still see the blue of the ceiling—like a sky where both had room: the adult who had gone far, and the child who had never stopped dreaming.
