Reflection on Transparency

When my body dissolved
I was 21,
new in a strange city
and my younger sister
had just died
opening the door and walking through it;
taking most of me with her.
I continued being a housekeeper
and going to grad school
but no one seemed to notice
that at an accidental touch
their hand passed right through
my skin and bone.
Often I felt like a balloon on a string.
People thought they were talking to me
but I was really hovering outside myself above.
Unable to get back in.
The longer I went without hugs or touch
the further I drifted
from my corporeal mooring.

I accosted a young man
who had been kind to me in passing
one day after work I begged him for a hug,
which he awkwardly obliged.
I was beyond caring about perception
it was all about not slipping away entirely.
Not waking up involuntarily invisible.

It took 9 months - a gestation,
to earn a friend worth hugging,
someone to tug me down
and back into
these outer trappings
everyone puts
so much stock in.