It starts with paling skin. Soon there’s just muscle, below that paler bones. He’s not dying, just turning see-through. He doesn’t know how or why, but knowing wouldn’t fix anything. The doctors have no clue, even the rabbi is stumped. Not that God’s ever done anything but sit up there. Today, he’s barely visible. A faint beard. Eyes like dim sky. Fingernails floating in open air. No medicine. No prayer. Though, he’s never said much anyway, never did anything great. Mainly life has just passed him by. Maybe this was inevitable. Maybe this is what he’s always been, invisible.

Alexander Shalom Joseph is an award winning playwright, poet, novelist and author of seven published books, most recently The Clearing (Middle Creek Publishing, 2025) and Living Amends (Galileo Press, forthcoming 2026). His novels have been short listed for the Faulkner Wisdom Prize as well as FC2’s 2026 Catherine Doctorow Prize. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School and an MA in English Education, writes a weekly poem on Substack and teaches writing workshops in universities, libraries, museums, hiking trails, schools and prisons across the Colorado Front Range.