The Stipple Ceiling

Melia Lenkner

A forest, monochrome, white and textured, as colorless as it is lush -- here and there, a swan-necked reptile will peek from behind dense foliage. Hanging vines camouflage another, a great, spined tail his only tell. Here, a smattering of wildflowers. There, a waterfall, erupting from the grass of a hilltop and spilling down, down, to where it crashes against the stones of a riverbed -- a riverbed that feeds into the sea. Somewhere between dragon and dinosaur, salamander and serpent, with stippled scales in white and shadowed grey, a creature pieced together from Animal Planet and Loch Ness legend floats through an ocean, sending forth a wave of bubbles with each sweep of her broad, flat flippers.

My mother painted this ceiling while she was pregnant with me, and I like to think she used a sponge to layer on the paint, giving birth to the creatures I would later discover on late nights when the hallway light brought contrast to the shadows and the creatures crept into place. Lights out, sweetheart, and the books went away, and I’d lay on my back and stare into the white paint. Better than a mural -- I went on expeditions and discovered the creatures in the ceiling, worked my metaphorical grip around craggy abstractions to brave the landscape, filled internal journals with species previously undocumented.

I no longer sleep in their natural habitat, and I have to wonder if they’re still there, lurking in the popcorn ceiling, waiting to be spotted. Sometimes, I wonder too, if my absence has driven them to extinction.