He wasn't shouting in anger. He was shouting because he was thirty-two and finally understood that the world doesn't listen unless you make a noise. He shouted for the promotion he didn't get, for the girl who moved to Madrid, and for the sheer, ridiculous beauty of being alive and caffeinated in the middle of a Tuesday night.
"¡Voy gritando por la calle!" he yelled to the empty balconies. Voy Gritando por la Calle
Elias kept walking, his pace turning into a rhythmic strut. He began to chant it, a mantra for the midnight wanderer. He shouted his dreams, his grocery list, and his favorite lyrics. He became a one-man parade, a megaphone for the mundane. He wasn't shouting in anger
By the time he reached his own front door, his voice was a raspy ghost of itself. His throat burned, and his neighbors surely thought he’d had a breakdown. But as he turned the key in the lock, the weight in his chest was gone. The street was silent again, but the air still felt like it was ringing. "¡Voy gritando por la calle
Elias looked up, a manic grin plastered on his face. "I'm alive, Antonio!" he guessed at the name. "Are you?"
The sound bounced off the brick walls of the apartment complexes. A dog barked in the distance, a lonely punctuation mark. Elias felt a spark of electricity jump from his chest to his fingertips. He took a deep breath, the cold night air stinging his lungs, and let out a jagged, joyous roar.