It all looked so romantic: a handsome hunk in wingtips and a fedora, dashing about with a sultry siren, caught up in a confused time of violence and passion. It’s the way most of the world has come to remember Bonnie and Clyde.

When Bonnie and Clyde met, they were both immediately smitten. Clyde asked Bonnie to join him because he was in love. She remained a loyal companion to him because she was in love. They carried out their crime spree and awaited their violent deaths because they were in love. They let all hell broke loose and didn’t give a damn, because they were together. And well, they were in love.

Four years and four months later, Bonnie and Clyde met their own bloody fate, ambushed by a posse of six lawmen sworn to bring down Dallas’ most infamous outlaws. There were 167 bullet holes left in the couple’s stolen Ford V8, 25 bullets on each of their body, one bullet snapping Clyde’s spinal column. It was said that because of these gunshots, it has gotten so difficult to embalm their bodies because they wouldn’t contain the embalming fluid.

Did you know that Bonnie Parker was born in October? And while she was smoking cigars, holding guns, and robbing banks, she also wrote poems? 

“Some day they’ll go down together / they’ll bury them side by side / To few it’ll be grief, / to the law a relief / but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde,” she once wrote.

Why do I know all about this?

I always wished for a Clyde Barrow to my Bonnie Parker. Not just a partner in crime, but a love story meant for the psychopaths, a tortured wartime love, a living history.

I could never have that now.

—

I long for so many things I know I could not have. I wish for things I am not meant to own. I look at you and see memories I want to possess but cannot hold.

We have a list of what we call a future memory. The truth is I have imagined everything, already had it written on my mind until the end of my life. Everyday I look for things that match, hoping to cross a checklist of sentences. Meeting you was a fulfillment, I wrote about you six months before I met you. 

I cannot claim people, things, or places. I cannot call anything ours as long as it changes. One thing is sure: I’ll wake up everyday wanting to cross a thing on the list.

Let’s make more, better memories.