Pursuit Through Systems
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
It did not arrive as confrontation.
That would have been visible.
It arrived the way systems move—
indirectly,
with clean hands
and plausible deniability.
When one door refused it,
another opened.
When police declined to punish,
the language shifted.
When courts did not agree,
the question was relocated.
When facts remained intact,
the framing changed.
This is not coincidence.
This is method.
There is always a vocabulary
that unlocks authority.
Concern.
Fear.
Safety.
Nothing frivolous.
Only repetition.
Each version of the story
slightly adjusted—
just enough
to survive scrutiny.
No single act
demands intervention.
But the accumulation
demands attention.
When one system clears a name,
the accusation travels
to the next.
Police to court.
Court to care providers.
Care providers to reputation.
Each time,
the same narrative
laundered through
a different authority.
This is not contact.
It is containment.
Not threats,
but saturation.
The harm is not one event.
It is the pattern.
A coordinated use
of formal processes
to isolate, discredit,
and exhaust
until resistance
becomes unsustainable.
Victory is unnecessary.
Fatigue is sufficient.
Doubt arrives
before presence.
And when withdrawal occurs—
to survive,
to breathe—
it is labelled admission.
When speech continues,
it is labelled harassment.
When silence follows,
it is labelled obstruction.
There is no correct behaviour.
Only predetermined outcomes.
This is how the trap closes—
not with force,
but with options
that all lead
to removal.
Eventually,
the system stops asking
who is telling the truth
and begins asking
who is easier to move.
That is the moment
the pursuit succeeds.
Because the goal was never contact.
It was erasure.
To make the cost of existing
higher than the cost of disappearing.
To turn procedure
into a weapon
that resembles governance.
And long after
the filings cease,
the record remains—
still speaking.
It works
because it never needs to raise its voice.
It only needs
to continue.
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