The Controlled Study That Lost Its Control Group (Romantic Love)

Lyrics

The hypothesis was simple.
A baseline reading.
A controlled, observable affection.
I had my charts.
I had my history.
The case files were all there.
Heloise, circa 1115, writing from The Paraclete.
A variable of intellectual fire.
Victoria, February tenth, 1840, the scent of orange blossoms.
A variable of sovereign devotion.
I thought I understood the protocols.
My heart was the control group, you see.
Stable. Unaffected.
Ready to measure the change in others.
And then you walked into the room.
And the control group just… stood up and walked out.
All my instruments went blind.
The readings spiked into a single, screaming line.
This wasn't in the research paper.
This is a controlled study that lost its control group.
This is you.
Dr. Fisher calls it a drive.
The wanting, craving, seeking system.
And my fMRI would show it now.
The ventral tegmental area, all lit up for you.
The nucleus accumbens, flooded.
My notes from Tuesday just say, "the way your hair caught the light by the window."
My data from Wednesday is the ghost of your hand on my arm.
This isn't science.
It's evidence.
Because you walked into the room.
And the control group just… stood up and walked out.
All my instruments went blind.
The readings spiked into a single, screaming line.
This wasn't in the research paper.
This is a controlled study that lost its control group.
This is you.
They kept his rooms at Osborne House just as he left them.
Hot water brought in daily.
I thought it was mourning.
But maybe it was just continuing the experiment.
Maybe the only way to study this…
is to live inside the data.
To stop observing.
And just… record.
The lab is quiet now.
My journals are no longer journals.
They're letters I might never send.
The conclusion is… there is no conclusion.
The hypothesis was simple.
The results are you.
Just you.