A Longing

Many moons ago, a young boy entered the world.

For the first few years, everything seemed ordinary.

He laughed, played, went to school and followed a similar path to his friends.

Then, when he was around six, something changed.

He could never explain it.

A deep sadness.

Not the sadness of losing a toy or being told off at school. Something much deeper.

It felt like longing.

Not for a place made of bricks and mortar, but for something more elusive.

More existential, though he was far too young to have found those words.

He felt something quietly receding into the background.

He wanted to go home.

He just couldn’t have said where home was.

So he kept it to himself.

As the years passed, the feeling never left.

Teachers would catch him staring out of classroom windows. Searching for something he couldn’t name.

He was supposed to be paying attention.

Instead, his heart seemed to be somewhere else.

***

Around that time there was the dream.

It came again.

And again.

He was alone in his parents’ house.

Without warning, the rooms darkened.

He ran from window to window, hoping to find light.

Instead, every window was covered.

From top to bottom with animals.

There was just enough light to make them out, balanced upon one another like totem poles.

Lions.

Tigers.

Wolves.

Great birds of prey.

Panic took hold.

He ran upstairs.

Every window was the same.

Darkness.

In one final desperate attempt, he climbed onto the roof through a skylight.

For a brief moment he was alone.

Then a great eagle descended from the sky, gently took hold of him, and carried him away into the distance.

The dream returned many times.

Its meaning, if it had one, remained a mystery.

Like many children, he had an unseen companion.

His parents remembered him sitting beneath the kitchen table, happily talking to someone called Bola.

At least, that was the closest they could make out from the sounds he repeated.

“Bola… Bola…”

They assumed his little friend was imaginary.

Perhaps they were right.

Perhaps they weren’t.

As he grew older, the longing remained.

Like so many people, he searched for ways to quiet the ache.

Some of those ways were healthier than others.

None of them lasted.

Whatever had stirred inside that six-year-old boy refused to disappear.

It simply waited.