By: Aiden Kim
(Field Manual No. 001 – Instructions May Vary)
Step 1. Find the skyline. Keep your eyes closed until every fluorescent light shuts down.
Step 2. Dismantle the hallways. Locker by locker, classroom by classroom, footstep by footstep.
Step 3. Erase names. Remove their sound from your tongue: half-finished lunches left on plastic trays, Mr. Johnston’s two-finger salute by the classroom door, Leila’s laugh that always broke too soon.
Caution: Fragments may remain. The echo of a bell. The scrapes of chairs on tile.
Step 4. Reprogram the body. Teach your feet that the cobblestones are only stones, not directions home.
Step 5. Box up the echoes, seal with tape, and do not open when it rains.
Warranty Information: Forgetting is only partial. Memories of the classroom may return in dreams, in photographs, in the casual architecture of strangers’ voices. This warranty only ends only when you do.