If I die before you die, and there's still a body, burn it down and bury the ashes. Bury the names of the babies I never had in the garden I never planted. Bury the ancestors I never knew, and the boat they came in.

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Remember the dirt from under my nails.
Forget my hands and where they've been.

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If I die unexpededly, know that I kept your letters in the back of the filing cabinet in my office.

Burn them.

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Delete my name from your browser history. Delete my emails. Delete my mascara from your t-shirt and clean my hair from your shower drain.

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Bury me face up, under the banks of the river. Erase the stones from the riverbed. Erase the hope and holy terror from the kids we were, drinking la fin du monde with our faces fixed on the sun.

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Erase the reflection of the moon on your truck.
Erase the sweat from my hand in your hand.
My tooth in your lip--I take it back

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Bury me in your favourite sweater. Bury me in the water. Drown me under the cottonwoods, and erase my skin from your bones.