Arrival And Departure (The Wall) Poem by alexandros filippakis

The day you came into this world, a few years after I came, I was neither a small child nor an old man. Even know, if you would ask me, I don’t know what I really was: was I the small child playing carelessly at the playground or the old man sitting bored and tired on a bench?

Anyway, the fact is that when you came home you filled the closet with your clothes; elegant, expensive and so many! ! ! ! For crying out loud what on earth were you doing with so many clothes? Nevertheless, one was for sure: you were already a member of our family!

Suddenly, one day we decided: “We and Them”
Later on, this changed to “ We or Them”. Thus, we built a wall around us. A wall made of mud and stones…

Then you started laughing, dancing and traveling around. Wandering to places where only your imagination could create. Sometimes, I tried to talk to you with my weak voice, but you weren’t listening. I was only trying to make you calm down, put your feet on the ground, become a mature young man. Don’t blame me for this….
Yet, many times I have wondered if you did really need me for all this?
Maybe you needed me but I couldn’t understand that. Is that true? I’d like to think so.

Do you know when I felt that you definitely needed me? It was that time I saw you crying…. that night you were sitting on your bed and you were crying…”It’s about love”, you had so proudly admitted. I stayed there with you more than an hour trying to calm you down and comfort you, caressing your head. At that time, I thought that I had really helped you…Now, if you could ask me, I think that this was the most I offered you during our short being together.
You know… the wall was always around us, but now it was made of stones more than of mud.

Then it came that summer. It was August…. You were saying or trying to say something about yourself. Something like… “ You know it’s about my life. You shouldn’t feel so much pain…”You were crying, weren’t you? You may have said some “goddamns” too… I don’t remember!

The fact is however; that after a few months you were gone…you had gone away… Wandering to the place that only in your despaired imagination could exist…

If you ask about me, I’m once again standing alone, neither a small child playing happily at the playground nor a tired, old man sitting humped on the same bench.

Oh…and that wall…It tumbled down. And there’s nothing left of it but mud. So much mud…no more around us but, damn! , between us…