Instructions for Disappearing

Step 1: Begin Before You’re Ready

No one ever disappears all at once.

You start by canceling plans,

then pretending your phone died.

You become blurry in photographs,

slightly turned, slightly faded.

You stop being the first to text back.

Then the second. Then at all.

Step 2: Unpack Your Name

Roll it around in your mouth until it tastes foreign.

Say it backwards.

Say it without meaning.

Whisper it into a well and wait for no echo.

You’re not erasing it.

You’re dissolving it.

Step 3: Change Your Rituals

Wake at a different hour.

Eat your toast without butter.

Walk streets you've never walked before.

Go left instead of right.

Don’t return to your favorite café.

Let them wonder.

Step 4: Learn the Silence of Rooms

Stand in corners. Listen to pipes breathe.

Know the language of dust.

Teach your heart to stop stomping.

Let your breath be quiet enough

to pass for a breeze.

Step 5: Release the Digital Ghosts

Delete accounts in reverse order—

from the most recent to the one you made at sixteen.

Wipe the browser history.

Burn the cloud.

If it remembers you,

make sure it forgets.

Step 6: Let the Body Follow

Abandon the mirror.

Wear colors that blend into alleyways,

into dusk, into the forgotten side of towns.

Let your face become an idea,

not a fact.

Step 7: Speak Only in Hints

If you must speak at all,

let it be in riddles or recipes.

Leave instructions only for the lost.

Write letters, but never send them.

Fold them into cranes.

Watch them fly away.

Step 8: Exit Without the Door

Do not slam. Do not lock. Do not announce.

Disappear the way stars do—

not all at once,

but slowly,

as daylight swells.

You were here.

Now you are elsewhere.

Step 9: Don’t Watch What Follows

You’ll be tempted to peer back

at the chaos you left like a peeled scab.

Don’t.

Let them tell stories.

Let them guess.

Let your absence be a legend,

not a scar.

Step 10: Become a Myth

Turn yourself into a whisper

spoken by someone who once held your hand.

Be the pause between questions.

Be the empty space where your name used to live.

Not gone.

Just untraceable.

Just unwritten.