Let my name be obliterated forever.
Let every work from my grasp come to ruin.
When everyone who has known me is gone
destroy from them also every remnant of my being.
If I have left a footprint, broken a rock in two,
let these be obliterated beyond memory.
Every place I have ever lived more than a day
should be pulled down and scattered.
And in all the world's archives
overwrite what they have about my life
and remove traces of this destruction.
The trail leading to me must be swept over,
all my clothing burnt and buried,
and let me go away after this divorce
from the rest of my kind to an unknown place
that no one will ever think to visit,
so remote it will have its own obscurity
where nothing as loud as a whisper,
the flare of a match struck by my hand
can filter back to the wide world ever.
My memorial shall be no memorial,
an empty place closed up as though it never was
and then I can breathe and take my own counsel:
getting down to the business of constructing
who it is I really am meant to be.
