No-one expects anything much of anyone at 3 o'clock in the morning.
The hidden hours. Is that when you left?
In need of a friendly passer-by.
No crisis number dialled.
I'm 12, I wait, nonchalantly, I have nothing to say, I want to be gifted with your unique observations and to see the world through the shape of your words.
He dissolved himself into the night. He stayed as long as he could. Does the insomniac choose to stay awake? The shelf stacker chose to rise for the early shift? Do we choose nightmares?
Drawing away from the day, sensory overload of cars, radios, people.
Nocturnal, like the house mouse you captured on video and fed cheese to.
At 3am you can hear the rushing of blood through veins.
Not the alarm clocks and good mornings and daily commute that you hate.
That one time, my 18th birthday, you took me and my friends to a club in London and we had the thrill of saying good morning to the milkman and seeing the sun's chilled light slowly pour itself over the horizon, white, like milk into a bowl. Cool rising.
That one time my 21st birthday party stopped to search for you, calling your name in the streets of a silent Devon village. My then boyfriend, wearing a bear costume. A cryptic note penned in your beautiful, impenetrable script. 'Walking to meet the early train'. 6 miles along narrow, bendy fast car road.
Left a note that time.
No mobiles then and I had to wait for a call. I wasn't angry. There were some things you couldn't manage.
I would try to stay awake, listening for your squeaking door and feet in the hall, to follow downstairs for deep round bowls of crisp cornflakes. Stopping myself from filling silence, counting in my head, I relearned that at teacher training, to create space for the quiet people who are not quick to warm up. Those voices teachers are desperate to hear and seldom do.
"It would be nice to think someone would be searching for me" But not the police, not the helicopters and flashlights.
My heart cannot sleep, beating heavy, filling with white, cold milk.
'Displays some ASC traits', could these 3 letters have helped explain you to yourself? To the world. Because there were always things you could not manage. Autism Spectrum Condition.
A vision of an elderly lady, reflecting the gentleness in you, vulnerability. Seeing you there, untimely. Asking would you sit and talk with her for a while.
So shines a good deed in a cruel world.
To keep you here. But elderly ladies don't patrol the streets at 3am.
A samaritan who comes toward. Not those tucked up in call centres waiting. You never liked being funnelled, processed. You stepped off the conveyor belt of well-paid and corporate and mortgage obligation.
You raise the bottle and our lives are flooded.
My heart crawls across the page reaching for yours.
