Losing Touch - March 26 2026

 

Losing Touch

March 26 2026

I have lost touch.

Words are no substitute,

and raising my voice

or writing even more

won’t bring me any closer

to finding it

or being found.

And while vision

even at a distance

seems as intimate as being there,

image

is as insubstantial as light

you can simply shut your eyes against,

and the flat screen

is as impervious

as cold hard glass.

If losing smell

deprives you of taste,

and the loss of sight

turns the world to guesswork;

if the hard of hearing

shrink into themselves

and regress,

then why touch

when they could have chosen any sense

as metaphor?

Is it because touch came first?

Because even a casual hug

opens you up,

your skin

as much barrier as portal?

Because it’s the language of love;

uninflected by words,

undistorted by the brain’s

parsing and censoring?

To have fallen out of touch

is to lose your grip;

like when the rope slips from your grasp

and you flail at the air

then drop out of sight.

Is to hunger for a hand to hold

and skin to keep you warm.

Is to begin to feel unreal

even to yourself,

closeted

and even disembodied

if absent long enough.

But when you are in touch

nothing stands between

you and yours.

And it comes so naturally

that even out of practice

hands will find their way

and bodies meld.

Even the stranger

on a crowded bus

you briefly brushed against

might awaken something in you.

It was only dormant, after all;

disuse may have dulled touch,

but only in death 

is it truly lost.

I typically male fashion, I’m very bad at keeping in touch. Married men have wives to lean on. My mother  used to be the glue that held extended family together. But I’m a bachelor, and she’s gone. 

I’m also on the spectrum, and attribute to that my failure in sustaining relationships. Or maybe, with my lifelong tendency to be a loner, I should own it as a personal failing. (Which, in turn, raises the question of just how much free will and moral agency we have in these things.) But either way, when I’ve been by myself long enough, I can see the truth in the idea that we only exist in the eyes of others:  I begin to feel a sense of unreality about myself, and it can only be relieved by being somehow acknowledged; by speaking up, by being seen or heard or even read.

But touch is much more powerful than either sight or hearing. The expressions “losing touch” and “falling out of touch” attest to this power:  there is no mystery as to why the physical sense of touch is the preferred metaphor for attachment, relationship, and belonging.

The poem goes back and forth between the literal and metaphorical meanings of touch. Although I suppose metaphor wasn’t needed before electronic media, before mail or messengers, and before our small nomadic tribes settled into cities:  you kept in touch with actual touch; and you literally reached out to regain touch.