Instructions for Disappearing

When you leave, take everything with you.

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Take your hat from the door, your papers from the desk, your dirty clothes from the floor (don’t leave a note: if you want to truly disappear, it should be as if you never were.)

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Assess the bottle of pills, the loaded gun,

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go over the placement of the red-hot exit signs in your head (if plan A is perfect, there is no need for plan B.)

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Take your image from the photos, your voice from the recordings. repurpose the fingerprints on everything you've touched, so that the whorls and swirls dissolve to dust, particles of flesh that could be anyone's.

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When you leave, take everything with you.

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Take the name from your door, your mailbox, shred the evidence any memory could point to of your laugh, your smile,

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your tears (wipe them from your cheeks, return the salt to the oceans, the spark in your eyes to the stars- as it was, it is not, and never will be, forever)

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Take the impression of your words from every soft, moldable heart-

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take, when you go, your reflection from the mirror, the image of your ghost in the fading afternoon light, the last solace of any lonely mourner.

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Take the sun from the sky and plunge the world into dark, take my words, my breathe, my life, with you (don't forget to shut the door.)

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when you leave, take everything with you

(or,

turn the page for reasons to stay.)