Oh, but they tortured him! Dressed him as a woman, howling for love in rags. He was pathetic. He was a prince. He was dying in a thousand colors. They put a crown on his pocked head and declared him ruler of the stranded, of the lame, of the antagonistically poor, degenerate souls of the alleyways and chronicles, of the proof that sadness denounces the petty.

It...is...true. And the forgiven scoundrels of testified pity will hang in their shackles on brick walls. Their posture will straighten as they stare at escape and realize its sucking, soothing, wet improbability. A wrist in a chain, shriveling to the bone, and freedom there in the rotting, love in the mouths of ghosts, tears on the cheeks of martyrs long since hollowed out.