Photo- Robert Nethery
Words- Sinned
In this moment I want to take you away and make you mine. I want to buy you thrift store dresses and drive you through the dessert. I want to shoot your father and live with you on the lamb in Mexico. I want to fuck you. I want to fight you. I want to watch the sunset through our toes resting on our windshield. I want to have no friends except for you. I want to laugh and yell wildly in the street and steady you by the belt loop in your jeans. Drunken lovers, your clacking heels competing with your laughter. I want to wipe your hair from your brow and feel a single tear graze my pinky. I want to kiss you madly and gently bite your lips. I want to watch you wearing matching sun hats with our daughter as I gaze out into our garden. I want to drink booze and make love to you in a sketchy motel and pretend Im not afraid. I want you to defend me, be loyal to me, and be proud of me like my father never was.
No I don’t. I don’t want what’s coming. I know you will someday feel differently. I know you will hurt me and ruin my life. You will wait to you know you have me. You will serve me everlasting pain. You will haunt me in my dreams and make me nauseus in the morning. You will teach me how cruel this world can be. How scarred and alone I truly am. I will realize that there is only me. There will be others but it will never be the same. That piece of me will be gone. You will have it now. You always will. You will take it with you someday when you die. You will feel it sometimes at night while you’re in bed and wonder if you made a mistake. You will try to convince yourself that you didn’t. But it will always be there, and I will always be searching for ways to get it back.
In this moment the decision is mine. I will spare us, you and me. I will capture this moment and hang it it my home. I will think of the Indians and their fear of the camera. They said a photo steals your soul. I will look at you everyday and see our life the way I want it. It is said that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, but in this moment I can spare us both.



