When mania visits…


He walked in the kitchen, went to the fridge, and systematically took down all the photos from the magnet clips.
One by one. He stuffed them back in the envelope, and put them back in the drawer where they were before.
He wondered why in the first place he bought the clips earlier this afternoon.
He stared at the clips, empty, hanging idly… waiting to grip a moment, to commemorate a face on a fridge door… eager to display a smile, a parent, a friend… he tried to spell out the letters ‘N’ and ‘O’ with the clips, but there weren’t enough of them… so he scattered them back, randomly, and stared at them again… Why did he do that?

He does not have any single picture displayed in his whole apartment.
Is it the faces? Does he find them too… obtrusive? too ‘there’, with him, living moments that are supposed to be of solitude?
Did he reach that level of ‘aloneness’ that he cannot share his space even with a picture?

Or maybe he was simply unable to decide which pictures to display.. people.. parents.. friends… there are too many of them.
No, not that.
Maybe he thinks that no one should be present. ‘present’…
‘All passed’ echoed in his head… All go back to drawers with time, or sit in closed albums at best. As if of their own will.
Or wasn't it? Was it his will. Well, yes maybe it was. But was this cruel? (He thought).
Maybe, but this is his memories and actually… his fridge door!
He brightened and felt justified by the idea (he thought this ‘out loud’ in fact, with a shake of the head to mark defiance… but against whom? he had no one, so he laughed at the thought as well… with much more merriment than you think).
Did he feel sad? yes. a little, of course. Estranged? perhaps. Odd? but how? How could one feel odd to oneself? skin to flesh to bone… to the very soul.

She visits unaccompanied…