Letting the World Forget Me

There are a thousand ways to disappear.

First, learn how to fold yourself

like a letter pressed between the pages of a book

you never meant to open, the one that smells like old rain and lost afternoons.

Don’t speak too loud, but not too soft,

like the breath of a ghost tracing the edges of a window,

never quite catching the glass.

Stand still long enough to become invisible,

the way shadows gather at twilight when no one is watching.

Next, if you want to vanish inside yourself,

you must forget the shape of your own hands,

trace the edges of memories that fray at the corners,

and slip inside the spaces between your own ribs,

where your heart used to shout.

Or disappear into someone else’s silence;

step lightly into the pauses between their words,

fold into the curve of their shoulder,

and wait for the sky to swallow you whole,

for the night to press down like an old quilt,

threadbare and familiar.

There are a thousand ways to disappear,

some are loud, like a fire you build

in the middle of a forest,

some quiet, like water pulling down stones and never looking back.

Fold yourself smaller. Breathe slower.

Let the world forget your name

like the way the wind forgets the shape of a cloud

once it passes over the mountains,

a soft erasure, a slow vanishing.

And if you must leave a trace,

make it a whisper, a shadow’s sigh,

something you might catch if you close your eyes just right.