I See Dead People
- Jul 2
- 2 min read
Sometimes I think I am invisible.
I must have been the other day because you almost slammed me with your SUV. Perhaps because I am invisible you did not see me.
I was invisible when I looked for you to talk to me, the day you averted your eyes and walked away (still laughing a wide laugh with your mouth open, your sound echoing down the hall).
I’m never invisible when it comes to paying and never when that salesclerk needs someone to spray with perfume.
But I cannot be seen when I have done something right and I must not have ears either because I did not hear you say, "That was good,” or “You did well” or “I am proud of what you are.”
And I must have been invisible that day in the cafeteria when you wrote on the napkin at lunch and showed it to the person next to you (who I thought was my friend) and you both looked in my direction and laughed because if I were corporeal, if I had a body, you would have seen the hurt and confusion on my face and you would have stopped and said at least, so how are you.
If I were corporeal, if I were anything but transparent, you would have looked at me with your eyes and maybe your mind and your heart and you would have said, so how are you today.
And you must not have seen me, right, that day I spoke softly with the need in my eyes and you must not have known that all I needed was to laugh with someone or to feel that somebody with skin on cared whether I felt joy or anger or whether my father was sick or whether I lived or died.
(He laughed as if he did not care but I knew it had been, that time, not an accident.)
I search for rainy day eyes, eyes that hold the world and interrupt it.
(You go, he said, sit down and write and I will do it for you.)
To see in color takes time and thought: these the world no longer owns; to see in color requires the new and the old at once.
For to you I am invisible and, though I live in color, you do not; an ancient tired soap opera, you flicker as an old tv, rolling over and over with the same motions and words and gestures.
To you, who will not live or see or feel in color, I am invisible.
