I’ll give you a dollar to go away.
Please leave me be.
You’re nothing more than a thought, and a useless one at that. You’re a reflection of things passed, and there is nothing to be done in your presence but be gnawed on by you. You are of no use to me, and you are certainly of no use to anyone else. I’ll be blunt: I want you to leave now.
You permeate the whole of my being, you drift overhead, you swirl around me, you follow behind me, all the while whispering “I dare you not to think of me.” I, of course, fail. And fail. And fail.
When my head is empty and quiet, you rush in to fill the space with your lurching, oppressive miasma. When my head is full of other thoughts, you bend those thoughts into paths that lead to you, into you and into your tangled, knotted labyrinths, from which I always struggle to find the exit.
I don’t know what it is you want from me. You are gone, you no longer exist, and yet you place a crushingly heavy weight upon me from beyond the realm of the real. Time, I would surely be told, will heal me. Time will be my savior. But what can time do that I cannot? Will it dilute you until you dissolve into the forgotten? Will your power wane as the days crawl by and you grow older, leaving you drained and impotent? Or will you simply- horribly, terrifyingly- be replaced by one of greater strength?
How can I make you see that you are not welcome here? How can I–
…
Forgive me, my thoughts strayed.