The Madwoman

Why are you never real?

You’re there until you’re not, and I can never hold onto it long enough to prove it happened. I feel you when you’re there. I know I do. It’s not imagined, it can’t be. But every time I reach for it, it slips, like I wake up just before I understand it, and I’m left with the feeling instead.

That’s the worst part. Not the absence. The trace.

Because something was there. Something happened between us. I know it did. It didn’t just disappear. It stayed. No matter what I do, it stays—a scar that doesn’t belong to anything I can point to.

So I go back. Like always. Into the only place you show up. Dreams. Memory. Whatever this is. I make the most of it while you’re there, because I know you won’t stay. You never do. And somehow that makes me chase it harder, like if I can just stay in it long enough, you won’t disappear this time.

The Scholar

The Apparition destabilizes the reliability of perception through intermittent presence. The subject experiences a recurring figure that cannot be consistently confirmed. The presence appears, produces a measurable emotional and psychological response, and then disappears without resolution.

This creates a closed loop defined by presence without stability and absence without closure. The result is persistence without verification.

“The shifting states you follow me through” marks a structural inversion. The subject is no longer engaging with distinct states; the states themselves fluctuate, carrying the subject with them. This eliminates the possibility of grounding. The experience cannot be confirmed externally, but its effects remain internally. The system sustains itself through inconsistency.

The Witness

This is where it stops feeling like something she can figure out. Before, she thought if she paid enough attention, she’d understand what was happening. Now it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t stay long enough to understand. It just shows up and then it’s gone again.

That’s what keeps her stuck. If it disappeared completely, she could move on. If it stayed, she could make sense of it. But it doesn’t do either. It just keeps coming back, just real enough to feel true and just unstable enough to never prove it.