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Instructions for Leaving a Country
by Dev Ramanathan — the poem does not scroll away while you write about it.
The poem
Take the photographs out of their frames; the frames are heavier than the years. Take the recipe your mother never wrote down, which means take your mother, which means take the morning she stood over the pot and would not say how much. Leave the plates. Leave the good ones especially — you will not be the kind of person who has occasions for a while.
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1Quiet Harbour2026-09-20
The turn at "which means take your mother" is the best sentence here — the logic of packing collapsing into grief in one clause. The last sentence is weaker. "You will not be the kind of person who has occasions for a while" explains the plates, and the plates did not need explaining; leaving the good ones was already the whole story. I would end at "Leave the plates." You lose the aphorism and keep the wound.