Instructions for Disappearing

Unpin yourself from the cork board

Remove the string.

They only tracked you ‘cause they were scared of where you’d go without them.

Stop answering to the name you were given

It was stitched in panic

by people who never knew the shape of your soul - just what would make you easier to control in crowds.

Pick a name that tastes like fire when you say it aloud.

That name? Is yours.

Get quiet, not small

Silence is not surrender; it’s a sabbatical.

Go underground, not underfoot.

Let them call you lost while you learn to breathe again, somewhere softer.

Leave no forwarding address

Don’t write your story on social media like a trail of breadcrumbs.

Those who would hunt you don’t need a map.

They just need your guilt.

Burn the blueprint

They gave you a life plan,

but it only led to cul-de-sacs and kitchens.

Rewrite the architecture of your future

using stardust and spite.

Forget being reasonable

You were never born to be palatable.

Don’t water yourself down

just to survive being swallowed.

Take only what you need

This includes:

The rage that kept you warm when love left.

The softness you buried under sarcasm.

The playlist that makes you feel like you’re levitating.

Leave the rest to rot.

Especially the shame.

Speak only in code to those who never listened

If they come asking,

say you dissolved into myth.

Say you became a ripple in their periphery.

Say you turned into a creature

that no longer answers to expectation.

Reappear when the air no longer feels like violence

Come back different.

Come back sharper.

Or don’t come back at all.

Remember:

Disappearing isn’t erasing.

It’s reclaiming the parts of you

they tried to write out of your own story.