ActionScript 2.0 :: Load() Function To Stop Reading?

I'm using load() to load a local txt file. The content in my txt file is as follows:

a1=message
a2=text

The problem is that, instead of identifying that as 2 different variables, flash returns a1 as:

message
a2=text

and, of course, a2 isn't even read b/c it's a 'part' of a1. How do I tell the load function to stop reading a1 at the end of the line, and to read a2 as well? I tried a semicolon ; and it still didn't work. Instead it returned:

message;
a2=text;