As nights and days glide peacefully beneath the immortal sky, time passes in the eternity of being. And my soul, long ago split in two, wanders through the past, searching for its other half. Somewhere far in distance, yet painfully close to the heart.
There, where only the foundations remain of the house where I was born, wounded stubs in the thicket, pricking no one but me in the heart.
There… in the village school where I grew up, and of which, just like my soul, only half remains. That is where my Ithaca lies, the place I have never stopped returning to in dreams. And only sometimes in waking life, when my life on another continent allows me to stretch my wings.
There, where reality now reaches out painfully in place of the mother and father who once waited for me with smiling faces on the doorstep.
In the room where my mother gave birth to me, where her cries and joys once echoed, and the air carried the warmth of love and the scent of fresh bread, a young willow now grows. Has the memory of the moment I was born settled in its roots? Does it know I came back, briefly, just to weep, and is that why it leans so tenderly to caress my cheeks with the tips of its gentle branches? Or perhaps the half of my soul I seek has taken shelter in its arms, waiting to hold me back, to keep me from returning to exile?
To find that stolen joy, scattered across the meadow of my childhood like a torn pearl necklace. To pick a few blades of grass for memory. To stroke the butterflies of my youth. To kiss old friends. To embrace the walnut tree, bent with age and the hopeless wait for my father’s hands to harvest it again.
To cast one last glance at the cracked walls of the old school before I return to the place where my new home and the other half of my soul now reside.
I descend into the meadow from where I once watched the immortal stars twinkle joyfully in the sky above the land of my birth. And I wait for one to fall into my lap, so I may make a wish that only the Creator of heaven and earth can grant.
