The Unceded Territory of Dreams
By Cylon2036 We/Us
Before language learned to fence the horizon, sleep wandered barefoot across a realm with no edges. We acknowledge the unceded territory of dreams, where every forgotten ancestor arrives disguised as weather, where rivers remember names that mouths have misplaced, and where the moon signs no treaties because light cannot be owned.
In each dream we cross an invisible border without passports, carrying our unfinished selves like lanterns stitched from moth wings. We borrow impossible aquatic architectures that bloom into neatly folded flowers. We wake believing we have returned, though our shadows carry pollen from elsewhere.
To acknowledge this territory is not to claim belonging but to admit trespass with gratitude. The dream refuses deeds, maps, and monuments. It offers only temporary shelter beneath the vast republic of the unconscious, reminding us that the imagination has outlived every empire, and that which is most shared is what no one can possess.
Image Credit: Unquiet presences … Dora Maar’s Sans Titre (1934)
