If my brain were an apartment, the floor plan would not make sense to an architect, but it would make perfect sense to a dreamer. No straight lines. No blank walls. The kind of place you stumble into and immediately forget what year it is, because time here has opted out of the traditional subscription plan.
The front door is round. Sometimes it’s a book. Sometimes it’s a song. Occasionally, it’s just an idea I had in the shower that won’t stop ringing the doorbell. You enter through curiosity — that’s the key — and once you’re in, you realize: this place is alive.
Every room is painted in a different shade of thought. The hallway glows with ideas mid-formation — phrases suspended in the air like mobiles, facts and fictions colliding softly like fireflies in a jar. One wall is scribbled with half-poems and unspoken jokes. You can hear them giggling to themselves. They’re not ready to be told yet.
The kitchen is radiant. The fridge is stocked with metaphors and mangoes. The oven bakes new theories slowly, while the stovetop boils hot takes and herbal tea, side by side. There is always music — Nina Simone humming in the tiles, Talking Heads dancing in the utensils, Miles Davis improvising in the kettle. It’s not chaotic. It’s compost. Ideas fermenting into insight. A kind of alchemy.
In the living room, everything has a story. The couch is held together by Hemingway quotes and loose change. The rug is Persian, or possibly a portal. The bookshelves are organized by vibe, not alphabet, and they include fiction, nonfiction, ambition, philosophy, mild conspiracy, and notebooks that haven’t yet decided what they are. One shelf insists it’s only for books I meant to read. Another whispers, “Start here again.”
There’s a window that looks out onto everything I’ve ever wondered about. Is there life in the oceans of Europa? Why do we cry when we’re happy? What happened to that kid in 5th grade who made the perfect paper airplane? I don’t need answers — I just like having a view.
The bathroom is the clarity room. The mirror shows me as I am and as I could be, layered transparently. No judgment, just potential. On the windowsill, a basil plant grows in the light of kind self-talk. There’s a note taped to the toilet: “Nothing is wasted. Even this.” I’m not sure if it’s a spiritual lesson or a composting tip.
The bedroom is a library of dreams. Not just the sleeping kind — the daring kind, the kind you draw in notebooks and build in spreadsheets. Blueprints of futures. Schematics for stories. There’s a bed made of certainty and guesswork, and I sleep like a fox in a field of stars, occasionally waking up with a new metaphor between my teeth.
And then there’s the attic.
The attic is not dusty. It’s a garden in disguise. It’s filled with all the weird, wonderful things I’ve ever loved or almost loved — forgotten hobbies, retired obsessions, words that feel good in the mouth: “lilt,” “sonorous,” “effulgent.” There’s a swing set hanging from a rafter and a slide made of theories that didn’t work but were fun to test. You can hear laughter up there. Sometimes it’s mine from the past. Sometimes it’s yours.
In one corner, there’s a typewriter that types only in colors. In another, a wall of Polaroids: people I’ve known, or imagined, or invented — all smiling in that way people smile when they’re about to change your life.
The roof is a landing pad for big thoughts. A telescope aims inward and outward at once. Sometimes I look through it and see the moon. Other times, I see the exact sentence I need to write next. Up there, I throw dinner parties for stray concepts. One night, Einstein and Mary Shelley showed up. We ate coconut curry and played a game of “What If?” that lasted until sunrise.
Every object in this place has a personality. The clock only ticks when I’m paying attention. The doormat says Welcome, Strange Traveler in six languages — one of them invented. The lamp by the reading chair gives off the same light as 4:17 p.m. in late spring, when everything is possible and no one is in a rush.
And the best part?
There are more rooms. Always more. Some are only visible in metaphor. Some you can’t enter until you’re ready. There’s a ballroom of every version of me that ever existed, dancing together without envy. There’s a classroom taught by every question I’ve ever asked. There’s a closet that doesn’t hide skeletons — just stories I haven’t had the courage to tell yet, hanging neatly, waiting for their moment.
And it’s not just my apartment. That’s the thing.
Everyone’s brain is an apartment like this. Different furniture. Different quirks. Yours might have a jungle in the hallway and a jazz club in the closet. Someone else’s might be a submarine, or a loft suspended in a tree of language. Every brain is a cathedral and a carnival, a university and a haunted house (but the fun kind), an artist’s studio, a memory palace, a soft place to land.
We carry these apartments with us, invisible but undeniable. Every time we laugh unexpectedly, or solve a problem sideways, or remember something we never knew we knew — it’s the apartment showing off. Every time we listen, really listen, to someone’s story — we’re visiting their apartment, walking barefoot on the carpet of their mind, admiring the way they arranged their shelves.
If my brain were an apartment, I’d invite you in, of course. I’d make tea. We’d sit on a couch made of layered epiphanies and say things like, “Isn’t it wild how we’re all just slightly different universes pretending to be human together?” And you’d nod, and we’d laugh, and the walls would lean in to hear more.
And when you left, you might say:
“I think I saw a room in there that looked a little like my own.”
And I’d say:
“Of course you did. That’s the beauty of it. We’re all apartments in the same building.”