Where is Alberto?

Where is Alberto? 

On a roof top ledge I could see trains rush past me, the city running on the edge of sunlight. It was late, people were in the house. Voices in the garden. Anonymous Yellow light in the council flat windows opposite. Cigarette smoke rising from moving lips. Talking about what it means. Was Jesus in the house during those young days? Overseeing how we went from school to the adult world. In one family, talking it through. Who we were going to become, as the music gave me fervour and the ability dream. 

I’m actually here I thought. The shapes and light I saw as an unknowing child, still exist. But they’re hyper real. The pain in the crying girl at the bus stop, is now understood. The anonymous yellow light means an empty room, absence of life. You won’t get to speak to your loved ones again when they go. The cartoons on the TV eventually turn off. And you’re left with ringing in your ears and you can only go fourth. Some people choose not to. But we were born wrenching, clawing at the open world. We might as well do that in adult life. To find out what it’s all about. Learn about ourselves. See things differently. See how different things can be. To put action into motion. To find out if Love is real. Does it exist? Does it last? Across the plains of time and space.

Back then it was all pretend. We knew at one point the party has to stop, the final track plays and plays and then gets quiet. Then the room is filled with levitating energy, that slowly fades and lowers. Maybe Alberto knew that, that’s why sometimes he is absent. But he calls me every now and then. To talk about those times. Simple pleasures, finding bugs under stones. Being free to search for yourself. Being you without description, without justification. 

I can have dreams if I choose to. Things don’t have to be surface level. You can go past the screen, past your self, past your own identity. You can return to the place where fantasy was infinite, there were no limitations. Time didn’t feel shorter. You could be anyone in your future self. 

Alberto gave me space to find out. Maybe he knew all along, it’s one big open canvas, roles to be played. Trials of living. 

And I returned and laughed to myself as the world watched on. I can’t be here I thought. I can’t be this far gone. It can’t be this late. I can’t be this grown up and still searching.