The Art of the Unbecoming

I. Preparation of the Skin

Begin at dawn, when the light slants sideways,

and birds speak in riddles only trees recall.

Remove your name with a bone handled knife

slowly, from the inside of your soul.

Bury it beneath moss that remembers no feet.

Burn photographs in reverse order of affection.

Start with the ones where your smile lingers

like a mistake in the background.

End with the one where no one else saw you.

This will take longer than fire allows.

II. Unfastening the Mind

Speak backward for a week.

Hold every conversation like a secret

you’re trying not to understand.

Forget the taste of your own intentions.

Drink water until memory tastes like absence.

Sleep facing away from your dreams.

If one follows you, offer it salt.

If it weeps, feed it your childhood

and wait until it forgets your name.

III. Disassembling Presence

Step into rooms like an echo

and leave before sound arrives.

Replace your scent with wet leaves

and your voice with the click of a clock

no one keeps wound.

Walk among strangers

until even your silhouette forgets its posture.

Look neither toward mirrors

nor toward shadows with questions.

IV. Final Motions

Find the place where maps blur

where roads lose their names

and wind speaks in syllables too old to trace.

Remove your reflection from still water.

Watch it shiver, dissolve

as if it never believed in you.

Fold yourself into the quiet between seconds.

Let time lose its grip.

Let gravity guess.

And when they say

“Where did you go?”

let them feel the absence

like a room rearranged in their sleep.

Leave behind nothing but the wrong kind of silence

the kind that makes the air hesitate.

You were here

once.

And then

you weren’t.