Instructions for Vanishing

Let nature be your guide.

Believe every season is final.

Promise nothing but disappearance

as winter leaves no room for spring.

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Be the sun at dusk, clawing at the last of light

like arms slipping over the cliff, scrabbling cloud.

Resist inevitability the way day clings overhead,

as if dawn is and only ever will be memory.

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Focus on the weeds, the horde of cricket buzz,

summer’s pollen-stained lust and teethy hunger.

Turn love’s longing into gluttony,

insatiably ravenous for beauty.

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Pretend totality the way trees lose leaves,

as if reluctant to let go, shouting their last green breath

in all that orange and red flame, winter wind rustling color,

the way fire chases wood’s surface alive as water.

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Believe only in winter’s cold night.

Yearn for snow and ice, beckon frosted air to lungs.

Silence the melting of the snow

lest warmth turn leaving into return.

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The bee loves the flower, the wolf loves the rabbit,

the root loves the land and the leaf loves the sun.

Demonstrate the wilted bloom and bloody carcass,

the bone dry dirt and selfish thirst for space.

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There’s a tiger in nature’s every shadow,

Reveal her golden eyes below the branch.

Once seen she cannot be unseen.

Let the sight of her be your leaving.