I have made repeated attempts to move on with my life despite your decision to plague my every thought and move. I cannot move forward. A change of venue, that of diet, even new clothes have afforded me a frivolous and temporary elevation of spirits. Accordingly, as I am thus paralyzed by a most profound sense of anguish, I lie in bed, starring at a black sky and pining for what little contentment life had once offered up. Why do you pursue me?
You grip me by the nape of my neck. You refuse to release me. I beg for mercy from you, The Hunter. You are a wily mistress, one whose cruel hold is that of iron. Between memory's relentless stabs at my heart and your refusal to disappear from my life, I am losing that steely mastery of self that had been pounded into my once unquestioning conscience.
In complete control of all that my eyes now behold, you pull me steadily backward into times past. Times that, I thought, were gone and forgotten. Nearly forgotten but for a brief remembrance triggered, in strange and bitter irony, by that most brief recollection of a fleeting joy. Sorrow forces upon me the certainty of her undeniable existence, her penetrating essence. You are she . . .
You have stolen my present, sabotaged my future. Yet, you say nothing.
Who are you?