How to Disappear Without Leaving

First,

wake before the sun remembers your name.

Open the window.

Let the wind rearrange your thoughts.

Take nothing with you—

not the photograph in the drawer,

not the apology stuck in your throat.

Especially not your reflection.

It lies.

Walk barefoot.

Let the soles of your feet forget the floorplans

of rooms you were never safe in.

Each step is a subtraction.

A soft unraveling.

When the road splits,

choose the path lined with things you once loved

but can’t explain.

The scent of thunderstorms.

A door left ajar.

The sound of your mother’s laugh before the divorce.

Do not look back.

Looking back sharpens the edges

of things you swore were dulled.

Time is an echo if you let it be.

Memory is a trick of the moon.

Speak to no one,

but listen for yourself in unexpected places:

a creaking swing,

the hush between waves,

the way trees don’t apologize for changing shape.

When you reach the place with no name,

sit.

Let the silence recognize you.

Let it braid your hair,

call you by the name you had before grief.

To vanish,

you must not erase yourself—

only loosen the grip

of the world that never asked your permission to hold you.

And when you’re ready,

don’t return.

Become the fog on someone else’s memory.

A song they hum but can’t remember learning.

A warmth in a room long after the fire’s gone out.

⸻

Author’s Note

This poem was born from the quiet ache of wanting to vanish—not out of fear, but out of fatigue. Sometimes, disappearance isn’t dramatic. It’s subtle. It’s emotional. It’s the slow fading of a version of yourself the world kept misinterpreting. I wanted this piece to read like a ritual, a soft rebellion, a surreal instruction manual for anyone who has ever whispered I wish I could just go—not because they don’t exist, but because they’re tired of existing wrong.

Every line in this poem is meant to feel like a breadcrumb in the forest of your own mind. Some people will read it and see escape. Others might see rebirth.

Both are right.