Evaporation

"Are you – Nobody – too?"
            ~ Emily Dickinson


A man falls asleep in the deep 
folds of a department store massage chair, 
and no one notices. It's dark when he wakes,
still inside the store now empty and shuttered
for the night. It's not something he intended
to do, and is mildly embarrassed at the attention
it generates. Whereas, there are apparently
people who choose to disappear from their lives,
even hiring "night movers" to spirit them away
without a trace to a different and undisclosed
location. In Japan, they're called jouhatsu,
which means evaporation. They let go of their 
names, every material possession they ever 
owned; their jobs, their network of friends. 
They even let go of their families. Some 
disappear to save face, because they can't 
live down the shame of a terrible mistake. 
Some have become disenchanted with their old 
lives, others because the weight of existence 
is too much though death isn't an appealing 
option. Their sudden disappearance makes it seem 
as if they simply evaporated into the atmosphere. 
But they still have bodies; many of them may be 
floating around in big cities, in plain sight— 
pale and anonymous as sadness that can't be 
tied to any particular thing, with no need 
to answer to the call of anything other 
than the overwhelming desire to withdraw.