• “To This End”




    Good god, I am heartsore.


    This pen tires my hand, tearing my nails with the flurry of scratching upon paper.

    I am a writer by trade, the written word a lure to the simple pleasures of putting

    My mind to the mystery. My pen, poised endlessly now, cannot stop for it brings me
    intense pain in that which was once my own mind, now yours.

    I am tormented by you, wretched maiden of the mist. Your hair of spun gold, guaranteed
    to richen a man were he to cut a lock from your flower wreathed head.

    Yet I am not richened by you, my healthy grows poor, my obsession with you flourishes such
    as my written prose does too.

    From the first day I saw you, I was frantic in love.

    Now I am frantic with endless musings and dark thoughts no mortal man should ever
    have to consider.

    Mysteries of the untold and the unseen. Thoughts of death that you whisper wordlessly
    are far beyond my time.

    I cannot stop writing this blasphemy; talk of “cars” and “planes” and “medicine to cure
    all”. Why must you bring this to me?

    A carriage and horses I barely know mine own way around; I barely can stand to shine my
    boots, let alone understand the workings of this thing you name a "zipper"; or "laces".

    I cannot stop. All I need is a sight, a flicker of your memory, your silken malice and I
    write to your whim.

    The lake within my view, through the long, glass-paned window that frames it, and you
    within.

    You watch this lake, as you have since you first caught my eyes with your snare, and I
    yearn to sooth your brow of the sorrow so etched upon your fair face.

    So firmed to your maliciousness, though beauteous and gentile you appear.


    Lady of white, you are killing me.


    What want have I to leave this room? Call for service! Water, bread, pen and paper!

    Why have you ensnared an innocent such as I with your plaintive misery?

    I waste and I weaken because of your spell, my sense tells me to tear my eye from you,
    crush my fingers, drink myself into a stupor from which no creativity can flow.

    Nary even a thought.

    You have ruined my life’s love; my literature and my writing. Twisted it against me, I
    would rather tear myself apart than suffer any longer, this indignity.

    But even now I cannot. I must write!

    My dark muse you have become, the black bow of your ship bobbing with some life,
    while you alone sit so stiff and cold; marble with the breath of life in her chest.

    Draped with colored cloth, ends trailing mindlessly in the water, and upon it, the one
    white blossom that is your hand.

    Oh how! To kiss your fingers and dip to knee before you—fey creature of disturbing
    allure.

    Silver arcs light the water, ripples from your boat, but you wait like winter, holding chain
    in hand, anchored yet to the dock.

    Waiting, for your chance to let go.

    My room is my prison now, ah! How my body aches.

    I am weak, gaunt and fading; and your willpower continues to force my pen to paper,
    using my name to feed your hate and your sadism to the world. This "future"! Ah me!

    I will die soon, but until my last breath, I pen what you have inspires.

    No more sleep for me, I am running out of life and you abuse me carelessly.

    How many have fallen to you like this?

    Turn your eyes to me, lady!

    You are no Lady of the Lake, holding aloft Excalibur for the once and future king.

    No Morrigan either; something else you are with your sad, misty face.

    Who are you, lady?

    And such maddening need! I, laureate of the written word, from which has brought my
    nothing but youthful end, cannot set even my pride against your timeless need.

    Mine own faith and will you have stripped, my psyche fragile and my joy ripped from
    me.

    Oh, my family. I must beg your forgiveness, this agony of entrapment and rapturous
    prose has stolen me from you. I miss you.

    Friends that I have abandoned, worlds I have yet to see. God, please, do not let this
    maiden rip the last vestiges of hope from me.

    God save me from you, sad temptress.

    You with dark eyes and fair hair; looking ready to either swoon or cast yourself into the
    dark waters.

    Ophelia fair? Are you without your Hamlet?

    Or Juliet awakening to Romeo’s fading warmth?

    My curiosity and your mystery hurt me so. I wish rest, I wish life.

    And I know you will never give it to me; your wrath I can feel.

    No more! No more! You push me to madness from which I will have no capability to
    return!

    Tonight, this poem I write is a decree, no more ink to your beauty, or your future and its
    war, its “technology”!

    To an end I know I move, there is no hope of recovery. But by my hand, not yours, shall I
    deliver myself to my God!

    My strength is still mine, I have little time.

    May what I pen now be my proof! My last work, by your influence I do not
    write! I cast my luck against you, and herein the gamble.

    My immortal soul to be yours? Or shall heaven taken so tainted yet humble a thing?

    At last, no matter what, your power over me shall end. I tear all my work to pieces,
    laughing to spite you! Take this! My misery is ending! My madness coming, but I
    will carry through to the end.

    A slip of arsenic; and I retire one last time. Finally to a sleep you cannot slip your claws
    into and wrest me from.

    I end my life with the words of the future you forced me to take in.

    “F-ck you.”


    Sincerely,
    Chatterton