Accumulated misfortune

I was reduced.  I was barely there.  When misfortune accumulated, I could feel now, it strafed you to the thinness of a nightgown, sheared you to the sheerness of a slip.  Light seemed to shine right through your very hands, your blood no longer red:  your skin in the breeze billowing, like a jellyfish.

p. 260, A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore, Dec. 2010