All My Life

All my life, I've been an ordinary person who everyone around me calls "invisible trouble", and now I'm so invisible that even I don't know what this thing is I am transforming into. I'd say it ran in my blood if I had any left.

The woman lifts her jeweled hands. "Do you have an attachment or desire to communicate with anyone in this house?"

I make the old stairs creak, that's part of my trouble. They carried so many feet, children turning to parents and grandparents, that even mine make sounds. My uncle used to chide me; you make them uneasy! But he bumped into chairs even more than me. It's hard to know when you're solid or fading.

"Do you know your soul has left your body? You are not tethered to this world."

That's the other part of my trouble, the family seeing me when they don't expect it.

I don't feel eleven anymore, but that's how I look when I slip out of death. Chalky, pigtail braids, pinafore. It doesn't hurt to come back, but it does hurt to feel. Death is a warm bath, and Life is the shock of air when you get out of the tub. Sometimes I shout on accident because I forget it will make sound; That's what the family hates most.

It's why they hired this medium; I'm our home's last ghost.

"You are free to go to the beyond. We give you our blessing, light, and love."

Her sage helps; I won't be much longer. Everyone else here has faded on; my mother, father, uncle, cousins. The fainter I get, the more I think of them.

I imagine my mother's fingers undoing the braids I've worn for so many years, working through the parts that tug my scalp. I imagine the crow's feet corners of my father's eyes, smiling when he sees me. I imagine my uncle, his brown beard.

            Slowly fading.

                         Slowly...