I've been here and not known where else to go.
I've been here and wanted to be here.
I've walked up and down this long passage at 6 and 7 and 8
And at 16 cried and said goodbye to these walls one sudden day on my birthday
As you rushed us out and threw us into the gates of emancipation
That lasted only a year.
I've dreamt of this place and longed to be there.
To be back again, hanging out the half open kitchen door, gazing at the stars
Singing my lungs out to the walls that listened
I've loved these walls
And upon returning embraced these walls and my fate within them
I've hated this place until I loved it evermore
But something happened here
Things have happened here
Things that the walls scream so deafening
Every time I think of here because despite the fact that nobody wants to talk about this exhausted topic of why and why and why are we
Like this, these walls remain and echo silently day to day
These walls that are still here listening
When someone else should be here listening instead.
A person.
The prayers we utter under this roof fall short when breath hits the ceiling
The words are swallowed in this concrete, never to penetrate through
There's no seeping, saving plea or utter that will deliver the message further than this enclosure
But the words will bounce around from wall to wall until we entertain them
In our hearts
That someone here is missing and has left us with these echoing walls as a reminder of it
Because these walls heard his prayers too when nobody else would listen
These walls heard his screams and his tantrums and his pleas and his cries
When we chose to look elsewhere
They probably know him better than we do
These are the witnesses.
Something happened here.
I'm not sure what it is anymore.
All I can say is that it happened to me too.
It happened to all of us.
But we won't talk about it.
It's bigger than the elephant in the room.
And evident in the absence of a soul in this stratosphere.
Surely now the walls reveal to us the secrets he whispered for so long to deaf ears
I gaze about wondering if I can be here or there and still understand so implicitly that some things cannot be expressed in words and neither will they be heard with the ears
But felt with the heart
So much that shut hearts cant decipher the thoughts of a babbling man
Desparate to connect to his root
But instead plucked from there and cast out like dirt into the rubble
The rotten apple that fell not too far from its tree
It's worms now gnawing away at the bark through the root that refused to nourish it.
And now this fortress losing it's branches one by one.
I am watering this place with my tears to feed the boabab.
I'm praying to the sun.
