That's it. I am finished. My life is over. I have lost all hope and see no solution but to make an end of things in the most fitting way possible. Three years of utter dedication to the divine Ms Rutledge, my goddess in this Earthly realm, my entire reason for existence...three years of impassioned love poems and gifts sent by mail from Massachusetts...all have proven fruitless! She has married that intolerable monster, that licentious demon, Wellington-Jones! Oh the horror of it! In the extremity of my despair, knowing that my final hour is near, I wish to be remembered only by this, my most ardent and expressive poem of the 712 I have written to Ms Rutledge. Hopefully she has kept the original copy I sent her, and some distant day perhaps she will find it, read it again and remember me, and a tear will fall on those pages, written in the blood of my perishing soul!

Ode to Ms Rutledge

Penelope Rutledge, O Vision sublime!
I think of you often, and wish you were mine
I think of you tripping down library stairs
The sun on your bonnet, the wind in your hair
No melody bright could express all you are
No vision of light and no heavenly star
No sunrise at dawn could encompass your grace
No vista at twilight could e'er match your face
I sit in my room and envision you now
The queen of my conscience, the wave at my bow
My ships are all stranded, now wretched they pine
No sails on their yardarms, no grapes on my vine
My vineyards are barren, my cats have no mice
My parrot has sought therapeutic advice
My hallway is empty, my phone's on the fritz
Penelope Rutledge, I love you to bits!
My hopes they are waning, as silent I wait
Intolerably distant from fair Twillingsgate
If not for thy grace I would plunge from the skies
As an albatros falls to his final demise
Yet hope springs anew with each stroke of my pen
That my words may yet sway you, and move you, and then
That together at last we may write history
With me beside you, dear, and you beside me
Penelope Rutledge, O Vision sublime!
I think of you often, and wish you were mine

E.M. (Ever Madly in love with you!)

Alas! This is adieu, Penelope! This is the Final Farewell!