The (Not-So) Invisible Man

Each month at North Arm Cove Writers’ we’re given a homework exercise for the next meeting. Here we were given a handful of opening sentences and asked to use each of them as a starting point. 

I am an invisible man. Ralph Ellison, ‘The Invisible Man’

            ‘I am [indeed] an invisible man!’ I thought, and thought to demonstrate this irrefutably. Daily, for example, Nurses will hand-over in the staff-room while I sit dumbly munching on a flavoured pie. Or one of the junior AINs might bring in her infant and a handful of colleagues will gather round, clucking and giggling as they bounce the child around on their hips, some looking positively radiant. To this I have nothing to add, so I simply quietly exit the scene.

            Yet the truth is anything but. I often remember the chat I had one day with that lovely American lass as we travelled to Sydney. Or the sweet gal from the UK I met at the backpackers’ who still occasionally writes. Then there’ll be the prompt responses from old friends and the warm welcome I regularly receive here, there and about.

            So am I invisible? Not really— just when it pays to be.