Instructions for abandoning the Earth while it is still breathing | David Anson Lee
HYBRID
10/9/20261 min read
First, remove your name carefully from all official documents. Fold it into a paper crane. Set fire to the wings.
Next, apologize to the ocean. It carried your reflection faithfully for decades. You rewarded it with oil.
Leave your house exactly as it is: half-drunk coffee, books swollen with rain, a sweater hanging from a chair like the exhausted ghost of someone almost forgiven.
Do not kiss anyone goodbye. The mouth remembers too much.
At the terminal, follow the corridor marked: PASSENGERS WITHOUT MEMORY. A nurse will measure the remaining weather in your lungs.
You may bring:
one photograph one recurring nightmare one secret too heavy for gravity
No fruit. No weapons. No gods larger than a suitcase.
During departure, the planet will appear briefly through the shuttle window: all oceans and scars, blue as a healing bruise.
Someone behind you will whisper, “We could have stayed.”
Do not turn around. The dead are excellent imitators.
Once gravity releases you, listen carefully.
That cracking sound is history finally admitting what it has done.
David Anson Lee is a poet, physician, and philosopher born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A Mayo Clinic–trained ophthalmologist, he practiced medicine for four decades. His poetry explores illness, memory, Indigenous identity, technology, and moral fracture. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals including Braided Way, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Silver Birch Press. He lives in Texas with his wife, Karen, and continues to write across genres.