Instructions For How to Live My Life

if I should die.
Use resistance as formaldehyde.
Refuse to accept the fact of change.
Reserve the right to refuse,

and refuse the right to be reserved.
Stop eating when you’re upset.
Burn off the rest in punishing workouts.
When you hear about emotional eating

or exercise addiction, don’t identify.
React to every word or change like it’s a harpoon.
Pump your cortisol day and night ruminating on safety.
When you have to set your alarm,

forget to turn it off.
Believe you can remember everything else.
Resent always being called upon for miscellanea.
When you read—and read everything,

save acting on it for later.
Make mountains out of marginalia.
Believe the dark is made of bears.
And if you should die…

Megan Wildhood is a neurodivergent writer from Colorado who helps her readers feel genuinely seen as they interact with her dispatches from the junction of extractive economics, mental and emotional distress, disability and reparative justice. She hopes you will find yourself in her words as they appear in her poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017) as well as The Atlantic, Yes! Magazine, Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more at meganwildhood.com.