Need and notes in glass bowls

 - I want it to get to the point where you don't need me any more. - 

I scratched in a full stop and leaned back to look at the words I'd written. It was the final sentence I could squeeze onto the yellow sticky note. Then I grasped a segment of corner between thumb and forefinger, and, edging round, tore the sentence away from its surroundings. It looked fresher and more potent, freed from the word jumble around it. I dropped it into the bowl as it began to prise open crisp-clear memories - I could feel again the way my head had arched to the side, my hands balled in my pockets, and the spike of my response: 'Need? I don't 'need' anyone. What do you mean by that? Why are you saying that? I'm not a - I don't 'need' anyone, for fuck's sake.'

And all the time, that horrible tight feeling in my chest.

But here, now, it was gone for the time being. I swallowed a gulp of milk and rustled my right hand through the bowl, burying the last sentence amongst its yellow-sliver companions. Outside the kitchen window, a small cut of moon sulked in the black spread. Rain spat at the glass. I was tired and I would do one more tonight. With practiced movements I tore the evening's final sentence away.

- I just can't imagine you in these situations. - 

What?

I pulled the edges taut, peering at it. I couldn't remember the context of this sentence. Imagine me in which situations? Social situations? On fire? It was definitely social situations. I didn't remember what I'd said. 'Of course you can't, they haven't happened yet.'

I hoped I'd done better than that. I flicked the slip into the bowl, finished my milk, and slumped off to bed. Glancing back after I'd prodded the kitchen light off, the bowl looked full and vital in the spill of moonlight; everything I could recall her having said at the end.

I had hoped for sleep to arrive swiftly, but in bed, amongst different shades of darkness, I sat smoking and thinking about need.

*

The alarm stole a mass of colours and images from behind my eyes. They felt important, and I mentally clutched at them as they fled, but in an escalating shift of moments they were gone and forgotten forever.

I should have written them down. Struggling up, I stared at my pasty face in the bedroom mirror. My eyes were thatched with red lines. I couldn't have slept for more than two hours. Then, like a lift jolting, recent events came flooding back. Thoughts and memories swarmed in, bustling and clipping together into an elastic jigsaw that wrapped around the inside of my face and smothered me. For a fleeting moment, I felt utterly desperate. There was such a strong swell of space between the dark, the smoking, and the lost colours and shapes, that the click into autopilot hung suspended... and the yellow slip was right, I couldn't imagine myself in any situations.

Then I was up, hurriedly splashing water on my face. Rushing through the kitchen, fiddling with my tie, I contrived to bang my hip against the table and knock my bowl onto the floor. The sentences fanned out on the white linoleum and I kicked out at them, sending a yellow flurry into the air. They should be familiar there, it was their original space.

As I bent to pick up my briefcase at the door, I imagined her handing me the little yellow slips; how silent and ritualistic it would have been. This bled into a mad image of her conjuring up a hurricane of yellow slips in the kitchen, grinning and hissing as the one that said 'you have to make your own decisions now' was sucked into my ear.

I shook my tired head and rushed out the door.

*

On the landing I saw my neighbour, his back facing me, fiddling with the key in his door. He was an older man. His head of wispy grey hair bobbed as he leaned down, and I mumbled 'morning' as I clicked past him and took the stairs two at a time. I didn't catch his response, if there had been any. Trotting into the cold morning air, my breath blooming in white trails, it occurred to me that I had almost only ever seen him with his back facing me on the landing, fiddling at his lock. He must leave to go about his daily business at the same time as me. Unless he was just coming back? But I had never taken the time to stop and talk to him. I was always rushing to work.

In the office I criss-crossed a hive of padding suits, nodding intermittently, and veered into my cubicle. I was shrugging my jacket off when I noticed a little yellow slip cut from the smooth white floor. Sinking to my knees, I peeled it off.

- I want it to get to the point where you don't need me any more. - 

It must have stuck to my shoe. This was good; it must have happened for a reason. These words were a fundamental part of me now, and I would only cross this bridge by absorbing them as they were meant to be absorbed. Not with a horrible, tight chest, and not with dumb, reactive responses, but with a meditative, studied approach. Only when they were properly absorbed could they become a part of history - as everything becomes a part of history.

The monitor glowed softly as I settled into my chair, but behind my red eyes cycles of need and reciprocal need wound and wound and burrowed their way further until it felt like millions of wasps flitting and scraping behind my forehead. And it was good - it was how it should be.

*

I was surprised, trudging back up the stairwell in my block of flats, to see the old man fumbling about with his lock again. I paused on the step I was on, momentarily thrown by the shift in dynamics, and dredged up small talk.

'Hi there,' I tried, aware of the volume of my voice in the small space. 'Not seen you out at this time before?'

The man turned his head, still scraping about at the door. I felt my upper lip curl a little. His eyes were horribly bloodshot; they reminded me of my own in the morning, but it was as if the network of red lines had settled into indentations, little red cuts skewering his retinas. Dark circles underscored them.

We stayed in this strange arrangement for a beat; me frozen on the stair just beneath him, him hunched around. Thin light filtered through a small window above and behind me. He wasn't responding.

'Er, I'm sorry I've not had the chance to speak before, I'm always rushing - '

He cut me off by flailing out a frail hand and grabbing at my own. I looked down, then up again. He had my little yellow slip. My sentence. I'd been reading it on the way home.

'Hey,' I said. 'Hey, give that back. It's important. It's - '

Hissing, the old man flung his door open, clattered inside, and slammed it shut. I stood for several minutes outside it, knocking and shouting. Then I sidled back to my own flat across the landing, confused.

In the kitchen my yellow slips lay as I had left them, scattered across the floor. I rested my briefcase on its side and sat cross-legged amongst them, selecting sentences at random.

- you're selfish - 

- I need time to heal - 

- I feel like an idiot - 

- we always say horrible things to each other -

- I still care about you, but I'm not in love with you - 

- I'm not in love with you anymore - 

Wind rustled at the window and shadows were still on the walls, like versions of everything frozen in washed black as they tried to escape. And I felt closer than ever. Closer to myself, and closer to whatever it was I had to do next. There was no running away from things.

Laying down on the cool floor, I folded my jacket under my head. I felt a twinge of annoyance at the mad old man stealing my 'need me any more' slip. I pulled my yellow notes close to me, crushing them into a bundle near my stomach. Picking one up - 'I need time to heal' - I laid it on my jacket-pillow and let the words wrap around my consciousness as sleep claimed me.

I dreamt I was in a dark field full of people swarming past me, but I couldn't see their faces, and I couldn't get close enough to speak to anyone.

*

I thought I had slept for a much longer time - despite being on the kitchen floor - but when I squinted into the bathroom mirror, my eyes looked even redder than before. Great, dark lines underscored them. I frowned and washed up.

Crossing the kitchen to the door, I decided to take my 'we always say horrible things to each other' slip with me. It had been a nice surprise to find the little yellow note with me yesterday. I also decided to recover my stolen slip, if I saw the old man at his door. 

Standing for several moments at my front door, I nodded repeatedly, psyching myself up. I felt close, closer than ever, but I wasn't so keen on things outside. Rattling the door open, I clicked onto the landing. And there he was, his back to me, leaning against his own door. The morning light illuminated a balding patch beneath a thin web of hairs.

'Hey,' I said, with force. 'Hey, you.'

He didn't look round. Maybe I'd been a bit rude. He clearly wasn't quite right.

I padded forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'Listen,' I breathed, 'that piece of paper, it was quite important to me, and I -'

Beneath my hand, he crumpled to the ground. I stood for a moment, blinking and watching his lifeless body slumped against the landing wall. His eyes were wide open, staring blankly, and looked - if possible - even more blood-red than last time. Great black circles ringed them, like he were some demented little panda.

Shaking, I stepped over his bent frame, twiddled with his key, and pushed the door open. There was a short, dark hallway; opening into a single, large room. Two curtainless windows at the back leaked bright light over everything. 

Everything.

The room was full of glass bowls, crammed full of crumpled notes of various colours. Bowls of yellow notes, bowls of blue notes, bowls of red notes. High, open cupboards framed the four walls, and these were packed with overflowing glass bowls, stretching up to the ceiling. The floor was littered with nestling glass circles, glinting in the fresh light; only a little spot in the centre was separate, reserved for a dirty-looking mattress.

Stepping gingerly in, I placed my feet in the star-shaped spaces between the bowls, negotiating them like a twisted assault course. I made for the nearest cupboard, and reaching for the highest shelf - balancing on tip-toe, swaying against the line of bowls at my feet - plucked a shred of yellow paper from one of the bowls lining it, and unfurled it.

- you'll end up like a leech, feeding off of people. you'll end up just being a leech. -

There was more to it; I hadn't unwrapped it fully.

- you can't be this dependent on people -

I threw the slip back in its bowl and swept round, rummaging into another on the floor, sweat gathering under my armpits. This one was blue.

- I just think you'd be happier with someone else. Someone younger. I didn't want to bring it up this late, because I knew you'd just want to talk and talk -

I made my way slowly towards the mattress in the centre of the room, snatching randomly at notes, snapping them open and hurling them back. They were the same as mine. Excepts there were hundreds and hundreds of them, a lifetime of them; sentences, thoughts - words spoken in anger or in parting. And at times, words without meaning. Phrases thrown into a constant stream of dialogue. Or things said in heat and hurt that, at the time, probably had meaning.

- that was three years ago. things have changed. you've had three years. -

- I can't promise anything anymore. -

As I set foot on the mattress, balancing on one foot over myriad glass bowls, I seized two red notes - 'I hate myself' - and - 'I've never been in love with you' -, and fell into the soft cushion. On a dusty rise near my head, I saw a yellow slip cut from the rest, and recognised it as my own. 

- I want it to get to the point where you don't need me any more. - 

I balled it up tight, as tight as I possibly could, and flung it into the field of glass bowls. Then I curled up on the mattress and folded my head in my hands, beating back the flow of memories inside and out.