[2][3] Alexandros, a middle-aged writer, leaves his seaside apartment in Thessaloniki after learning he has a terminal illness and must enter a hospital the next day to perform more tests.

Alexandros hides a young Albanian squeegee kid from the police who are arresting other boys like him at a traffic stop in order to deport them.

Instead he gives her some letters written by her mother, which she reads out loud, triggering his memories of the time when their daughter was a newborn at her baby shower.

On his way back, Alexandros meets the immigrant boy again, and witnesses his capture at the hands of human traffickers who try to sell him into illegal adoption.

The boy's perilous existence brings Alexandros out of his stupor and self-pity, and seemingly re-energizes him in his love for a 19th-century Greek poet, Dionysios Solomos, whose unfinished poem he longs to complete.

The former over what lies ahead for him, and whether his life has had any impact; the latter over the perilous return trip to Albania on a path over the mountains lined with land mines, as well as traffickers.

The pair take a bus trip and encounter all sorts of people, from a tired political protester to an arguing couple to a classical music trio.