Needs

I ordered a black coffee to go from the new spot just down from the

park. Inside was a woman creating abstract art with a highlighter against paragraph after paragraph in a thick textbook with a royal blue cover. The page was titled “The Whiskeys of Lorraine”. I thought she might be studying to be whatever they call a sommelier for whiskey. The Barista behind the counter waited patiently as I stared at the bright yellow lines snake across each page. She wouldn’t stop, at first she highlighted quotes and the occasional date. But now it was line after line, three quarters of the page was coated in bright yellow, lightly        

perfumed lines. It couldn’t all be important surely? The Barista tapped the card machine politely and snapping back to reality I muttered my apologies as I pulled my wallet out of the back pocket of my jeans, the same jeans as the night before. I drew my card out of its usual place inside the first sleeve on the side with the embossed logo. I had been gifted the card wallet recently by my mother and in some vain stand against “the man” I had decided I wouldn’t pay using my phone for as long as possible. I found the act of pushing my thumb against the 

plastic card and sliding it away as smoothly as possible was a fun game to play with myself. I was seeing how much flare I could add to each payment. I’d tried to tap the whole wallet, to hover the card above the reader, even letting go of the card entirely. This time I decided to keep polite eye contact with the barista and ask about her day, push lightly down on the lcd screen attached to 

the till (a much harder POS system to add panache to) and as usual refused to tip any extra percentage as I waited for the dull beep of the reader. I slid my card back in aside an expired and unused gym membership card and a business card for a hairdresser that was much too far out of my price range. I kept everything in my wallet as packing to prevent things from slipping out of the now flabby leather. The only things I ever used were my ID on 

occasion and my pale blue bank card. Except I was now met with a harsh charcoal grey bank card, It had no logo but still wore an account number, sort code, ccv and my name stamped in neat letters on the back. The front, or what I had named front, bore absolutely no markings whatsoever. Just a plain, flat, corporately deep grey card. The weight of it was pleasant in my 

hands. Before accepting my coffee I inspected this new card, and looking up to the barista I exclaimed, 
    “this isn’t my card” she didn’t seem to care. 
    “who’s is it?” 
    “I don’t know” 
    “well why do you have it?” 
    “It was just in my wallet” 
    “does it have a name on it?” 
    “well yes, it’s actually got mine on it” 

    “you said it wasn’t yours” 
    “I’ve never seen it before, yesterday I had a blue card and today I have this grey one…” She looked at me through tired eyes, I couldn’t see any way out of this conversation except deeper. I pulled the full card out of my wallet and held it out in the palm of my hand. 
    “have you ever seen a card like this?” I thought that as someone who works behind a counter she would surely be familiar with all manner of

banks. 
    “no it looks fancy, like those black cards they give out to celebrities for restaurants” I had never heard of anything like this, my face clearly showed it as she began to explain further.     
    “like the ones with unlimited funds. Anyone who has a Nando’s black card gets free Nando’s for life” 
    “can they get taken away?” 
    “well probably if they really wanted they could cancel it yeah” 
I stared at the card in my hand a little longer pondering the nature of it. It’s origin, the quantity of funds contained within it and how my 

name appeared on it. The Barista looked at me with smile that said ‘anything else sir?’ Despite gazing with eyes usually retained the dying. I glanced from the card to The Barista and then over my shoulder, seeing no line I asked once more,
    “you’ve never seen a card like this?” 
    “people usually just pay with their phones…” 

I stretched my legs in the park, Doing my usual lap before retiring to my favourite bench on the far side of the grass. From this spot I could see all the entrances and exits, the large white brick cafe selling something similar to coffee and the scattering of retirees walking their dogs using plastic ball throwing devices and using specialised water bottles for pets. The women in slightly baggy faded v-neck tees and leggings, the men in chino’s and linen shirts with buttons near the 

elbow to keep the sleeves rolled. I like to sit cross legged on a bench with a coffee in one hand and in moments of weakness (as I was in) a cigarette in the other. I hit shuffle on my phone and tapped through about twenty songs before making the decision that no song would be right for my mood and tore the earbuds out of my ears gracing them with the sounds of distant traffic, a phone call too faraway to hear anything interesting and a smattering of barks accompanied by the pathetic 

summons of their hapless owners. I lit my cigarette using a lighter my sister had gotten me for my birthday some years back. At the time I wasn’t a smoker, not that I would call myself a smoker now, I impishly call myself a man who smokes the occasional cigarette. Neatly bypassing any guilt or potential harmful side effects that the term smoker brings with it. They say that when you do things without intention that’s when you let the 

conflict and pain in, So with great intention I click open the case, flick the flint and catch the tip of my cigarette with a gentle dancing flame. Taking an exceptionally intentional breath in and an even more intentional breath out my head was filled with a biting trill and my eyes seem to part in two polar directions.
    “fucking hell” I mutter out loud. Thats not how it’s meant to feel, 

well a little bit it is. I take a sip of my coffee in a vain attempt to quell a cough but still It splutters out. 
    ‘I must be out of practice’ I lie to myself as I take another drag. 
    ‘Ew ew ew’ Is all I can think. What a disgusting feeling. I had been looking forward to this smoke after the last twenty-four hours of madness and for the joy to be taken from me at such a late point in the 

game made my heart pitter patter like hearing the fifth click in a game of Russian roulette.  
    ‘I’m not addicted’ I speak to my mind despite the feeling of want growing in my gut. If not a cigarette, a coffee. If not a coffee a snog, if not that then, a private moment alone. All compounded by the growing lack of any ‘job’ or any real solid s

ocial plans to speak of aside from whatever you would call what I do with my flatmates. Smoking weed, complaining about people I tell myself I don’t care about or playing video games until hours meant for dilettante’s and layabouts. When Cara, the love of my life, is around I fill o

ut my shape of man and start walking and talking like someone who knows themselves. Here at week three of a two month separation I have already found several loose threads and started picking at them, stupidly testing the extraordinarily compromised structural integrity of my cable-knit life, knowing It’ll fail it’s MOT. 
    Had my sister known I would find vice when she gifted me the lighter? Taking a sip of coffee I stare at 3 birds dancing in loops high above me, they don’t give a crap about anything I bet. I run my thumb over an engraving on the face of my lighter
    
“all we have is here on earth”