Gone

Step one:

Wake first.

Before the alarm. Before the baby’s cry.

Before your name is spoken with a need attached.

Boil water.

Toast bread.

Balance lunchboxes like prayers offered up

to gods who never say thank you.

Step two:

Speak softly.

Don’t correct their tone when they bark.

He’s tired, the job is hard.

They’re kids, they’ll learn.

Your mother-in-law forgets things now,

so she forgets you entirely.

Step three:

Be the net.

Catch the permission slips,

the socks on the floor,

the loose screw on the cabinet hinge.

Catch the birthdays,

and the dentist appointments,

and your boss’s passive praise

for “pulling it together again.”

They never see the stitches

in your smile.

Step four:

Don’t bleed.

Not visibly.

There’s no room in the family calendar

for your breakdown.

Cry in the car

with the seatbelt holding you

like someone might,

if someone thought to hold you.

Step five:

Erase yourself gently.

Start with the photos—

step out of frame.

Then, stop buying your favorite cereal.

Stop answering questions with anything

but solutions.

Stop writing in first person.

It’s too direct. Too loud.

Step six:

Become wind.

Invisible,

but essential.

Sweep through their mornings,

push them through the day.

Let them call it grace,

or luck,

or God.

They won’t say your name.

Step seven:

Forget the sound of applause.

Forget the heat of being seen.

Forget the last time someone asked

how you were,

and stayed long enough

to hear the answer.

Forget your own birthday

like they do.

Let the candles burn down alone.

Step eight:

Write a note.

Not a goodbye—

a grocery list.

Milk, eggs, laundry detergent,

hope.

Leave it on the table.

See how long it takes them

to realize it’s the last thing

you left behind.

Step nine:

Disappear in plain sight.

Be the coat rack.

The carpool.

The spreadsheet.

Be the echo

of a woman

once named “Mom,”

once named “Honey,”

once named

at all.

Step ten:

If they come looking—

(if)

Don’t make it easy.

Hide in the seams

you spent a lifetime stitching.

Let them trip

over the silence you left

folded in the laundry.

Let them wonder

how someone so necessary

could vanish

so quietly.

Let them realize

you were never

gone.

Just

never truly

there.