The Visiting Wall

He went to visit at the wall. Through the great, glass screen the water reached into the great beyond. In there were those who chose to live before their time came to die. Mysterious and macabre they lived a life out of view, distant from those who stayed behind. The only connection remaining was the visiting wall, where those lost could come to see the loved ones who cared for them still.

But there were those for whom their loved ones refused to come, or who they could not bear to see. Then there were the ones for whom their loved ones had moved on, or passed away. For them the lake was a prison, and they became locked in their loneliness. But still many came to the wall, in hope, of seeing those they had given up. And those left behind, who had no one to see, came in support. Reaching out to the great beyond, to the lost souls inside.

The man, he came and he saw; the young woman with the golden hair and the sad eyes, who smiled to see a face that sought to know her. He was captivated, enthralled by the woman and the mystery she lived in her infinity of water. So he came, day on day, to see more of the woman he could never know. Behind the glass, behind time, lost to him even before he had begun.

Always reaching, always wanting for what he could not have, the man did as he always did in life. He imagined the woman that she could be, the one that fitted him so perfectly. She was wise, she was witty, she was beautiful. He was mesmerised by the face he thought belonged to him, so much so that he never wondered why she had come to the wall, or who she had come to see.

Then one day as he stood before her, her smile began to grow, for something in the distance. A man she seemed to know. Who rushed to the wall in a frenzy, and tried to touch her through the glass, kissing at her face where she pressed in close. The man’s heart dropped, she was never his to begin with. How she had led him on, how she had made him think he was special, he howled in despair.

He did not return to wall. Made sad and angry by what he would lament as the manipulative creatures within. Never realising that wanting someone, wishing for them, does not make them yours. Imagining something there that is not plain to see, is only ever in your head, and not to be. That person you saw, and the connection you felt, was nothing more, than your own loneliness reflected in the glass.