Echoes of Love and Madness

A masquerade of goonish thoughts floods the starry sky. It is merely a fallacy of what must be conducted under this orchestration of musical thoughts.

The sky was auburn red on this winter’s day. It was the day I met you, and it was the day I lost you. I was a poet, a revolutionary, and an anarchist, brimming with patriotism. You were my queen, a lone deserter from the back streets of some bar. You were nothing more than a beggar. Being the patriot I am, I gave you all my cash. You counted it and smiled gently. I felt like I amused you. You grabbed my hand and gently led me to your place. It was the most romantic night of my life. You did not know it at the time, but you were my first. Now everywhere I go, I see clones of you. Is it just my imagination, or are you everyone and no one?

I searched for you, I longed for you. I would even kill for you if I could find you, if I could see your smile. I would do anything for you. Yet, why do they arrest me? Why do they send me away to Alcatraz? I’m no Houdini, so there won’t be any escape. But why? Why must I be here? I’ve done nothing wrong. All I’ve done is love like no other. Is loving someone a crime in the eyes of society? Do they ridicule me? They must think of me as Humbert and you as Charlotte, yet that is far from the truth. I’m innocent. I tell you, all I’ve done is love and live like no other.

It’s been days since I’ve been in this prison. Now you’re but a speck of fragmented thoughts, swirling around my mind and ruminating in my heart. Were you a blonde Californian dancing to the peppers and drinking in the blues? Or were you a brunette from New York, drowning in snow and sipping powdered milk? You could be both, and you could be neither. You could have been a man for all I know. I don’t have the faintest clue. Who do you think I am? Scooby-Doo?

Are you alive or dead? Should I be sending Holmes after you? In his opiate-dazed stupor. Yet, aren’t we all Holmes now, with the internet buried beneath an epidemic of false head musings? Do you miss me, my love? Those drowned-out guards in this impenetrable prison can’t keep us apart. I shall once again reign supreme in our mating ritual of souls.

My love, I’m remembering you less and less. I think the guards are putting poison in my food. My memory is becoming hazy, my body is weakening, and I feel my life draining. They’re giving me these pills, or candies as they call them. My love, what am I supposed to do? They say I need them to forget you, to forget my past. Why must I forget my past? Wasn’t I fit to be king? Wasn’t I a leader of men? Why must I forget you when your entire being is fully ingrained into who I am? Without you, there’s no me. Without me, there’s no world. Can’t these bumble-headed buffoons see that without me, the designer of life and purgatory, the god amongst men, this world will collapse into a state of nothingness?

I’ve been in this prison for months now, my love. The memories of you are becoming few and far between. It’s like a decathlon of mental gymnastics just to remember who you are, who I am. I remember the summer days when you would just lie in the park, listening to the mockingbirds sing. Mockingbirds? God damn it, haven’t these guards heard not to kill a mockingbird? I feel like Tom Robinson. My life is being robbed from me by the prejudiced gravediggers of society!

How the mighty have fallen! Once a mighty revolutionary, the people’s champion of hope and love. Now squabbling like the homeless denizens of downtown alleys. All I need is my medicine, my love. If I had this liquid gold, this elixir of life, I could break free from these chains that imprison me.

My beloved. My beloved? Who is my beloved? These guards here say I never had one. That’s mighty strange to think, but I don’t even know who I am. When I first came to this prison, it was dark with the sounds of torturous wails. Now it just looks like a hospital. Am I in a padded room? When I first came here, I was a revolutionary hero on the verge of a coup d’état. Now I don’t even know who I am. I only know I’m me.

What I do know now, my beloved, is that you were my burning blaze of glorious insanity. Isn’t that why they locked me up in this padded room, and I took this candy for you to disappear? Until we meet again, adieu.

My love, maybe I really am Humbert, and you are my Charlotte in this web of lies. Maybe I’m Bob Ewell instead of Tom Robinson. I’m not the mockingbird in this story. I may be nothing more than a slithering snake, but at least I was able to see Eden when I met you. Now, my dear audience of nosy gremlins who by now I assume want me hanged, think to yourself, aren’t you just as guilty as I am? You look at me from your pedestal of purity and holiness. Yet, is it not you who let this happen? Is it not you whose first instinct is to turn a blind eye if it doesn’t involve you? Is it not you who are only charitable because you fear hell? If you want monsters like me to stop, do not teach your children to judge. You know as much as I do. You want nothing to do with those you see below yourself. They’re heathens, they’re animals, you say to yourself. Isn’t that why you burned them at the stake? Is it not because they were different? Stories like mine will happen time and time again until we as a society learn to accept each other as humans and as equals, despite our differences.