Softly, with salt

How to Disappear

written in marrow, found beneath the butcher’s block

Start small.

Don’t begin with silence.

Practice absence.

Slip it into your skin.

Stop making shadows. Stop correcting names.

Adopt a fragrance of nothingness.

Something virginal and cloying.

Something that lingers like lilies in bleach.

Sell the bed. Burn the linens.

Sprawl upon the tiles until your dreams come loose.

Let the roaches climb into your skin.

Let them carry your scent back to their homes

and sing of the god who sated them.

Unmake yourself gradually.

Tenderize what you can.

There’s no attention paid to the silent. The self-gathered.

Skin the fragments carefully.

Render them gently.

Reduce them to silk. Season them well.

You must love what you present.

You must not falter.

Feed the world your regrets.

Fold your shame into aspic.

Place it in delicate porcelain bowls and antique spoons.

Smile.

They will not thank you.

They never do.

Your mouth will be next.

Your tongue will whisper without your consent.

It will claim the meat as yours

when they carve and they don’t ask your name.

Especially when they don’t ask your name.

Paint the walls with your recipes.

Write your last will on the reverse of butcher paper.

Use grease. Use blood. Use what you have to spare.

You will not be remembered for your ink.

When the illness flowers—

and it will,

a creeping fermentation in your rib cage—

do not grieve.

Grief is for those who still feel in body.

You are near-breath now,

held in the lungs of those who chewed with care.

You are soup stock.

Salt.

An aftertaste.

Invite your friend when you can no longer stand.

The one who’s voice is a whisper and hands more sure.

Ask them to bring you to the butcher’s block.

Do not meet their eyes.

You were never theirs to grieve.

Lie flat.

Breathe shallow.

The wood will remember your spine’s curvature.

Say nothing.

Let the blade separate what’s left.

Let it sing,

because it will sing—

a single note, high and wet.

Like your name the last time anyone meant it.

The final cut is not pain.

It is punctuation.

And you,

you were always meant to be

devoured.