text: Every night, it’s the same dream. A familiar voice beckons me into that luscious, thriving garden. Through the aged wooden gate held together by rust and sheer willpower, I trudge. The path never seems too long, yet as I traverse it, I feel energies seeping from me that I unwillingly borrowed in the first place. Bonds that I have no earthly collection of forming shattering in the dense moonlight. It’s like radiation leaving my bones - colour draining from my marrow, my muscle mass shifting, altering. Remembering some form better than the one I hold now. I feel myself change, yet I know I am the same. When I get there, it awaits me. An MC-Escher like collection of plants, stairs, and the feelings and thoughts of those who came before me. Brilliant collections of living matter, intertwined and codependent. Forms that seem impossible in wake take shape here, beckoning even the most lucid of travelers. I find myself exploring, wanting more of this place. Every staircase I climb, new energy fills my cells, turning them into an instrument for incessant humming. I am but a vessel. I find new purpose in the unreadable, ancient etchings on the infant stone walls. Cryptic symbols that some part of me reads like home. After some time, the illusion shatters - I find myself falling through steep nothing as my body divides and reunites rapidly. New version of myself, colliding with the old. A woman, faceless and formless, yet clear in my mind. She comforts me as I undergo this process, becoming something new. I wish she would stop. No - I wish she would keep going. I lose track of my mind as it races off without me. There are parts of me that don’t want to change. These parts are slowly mutated, reformed and bathed in blistering white energy that ages them past perception. The more resistance I show, the more she grows agitated. But she never hurts me. It’s almost like she knows how much I am holding back in the waking hour. Eventually, I feel the changes come to a stop. I’m allowed to exist in the current form I hold - floating in an embryonic state, waiting for the creation of all... or is it the destruction? I feel fantastic. Frantic. Manic. The deep layers of depression binding my soul during the working hour no longer restrict me. I am formless. In this moment, I am whoever, or whatever, I need to be. I find peace. We swim through existence together, basking in all the endless possibilities of the new minds we hold. We visit those who are bound by their humanity, and we bless them with the same gift. Then, every single time, the shaking begins. The matter around me vibrates and I feel myself collapsing back into my primordial form. Sick, twisted, repulsive flesh and bone. Humanity I didn’t ask for. Ribbons of anxiety, depression, anger - wrapping around me like chains on an old boat. She fades away with a sadness that’s untranslatable. Every night I fight this rebinding, this recalculation of my earthly matter. But last night, a strange language filled my synapses, and gave me strength to fight. A location burns into my mind. It stays. I wake up in a pool of disgusting, mortal sweat as the alarm clock blares, calling me back to life. Notions of office blocks, morning coffees and office workers fill my mind as my humanity is recompiled. I long to sleep again, to feel the feelings I felt during my slumber. I want to feel those feelings constantly, to have that sense of purpose full-time. Normally, I have no choice as I sink back into my life. This time, things are different. I feel a calling to that location branded into my grey matter, a deep beckoning. I know what I must do - the Godmouth awaits me. It awaits you too.