This is What You Always Wanted

Photograph of a man I adored buried in my bed as the morning light streams in.

Photograph of a man I longed for, in a swimming pool at night after telling me he wanted to be an astronaut.

Photograph of a man sitting by a fire, eyes blue and skin warm.

Photograph of a man I thought I loved, about to fuck me on the dirty floor of a laundromat.

Photograph of a man I adored handing me a book full of his notes, while jazz plays in the background.

Photograph of a man I hardly knew in my studio, backlit and blurry.

Photograph of a boy I longed for in my studio at night after eating violet licorice and avoiding my questions.

Photograph of a boy laying in bed after fucking me and refusing to kiss me.

Photograph of a boy I had a crush on, holding coffee and squinting, as seen through a camellia bush.

Photograph of a man I loved sitting at my table drinking coffee.

Photograph of a man I loved climbing onto a red Coco-Cola truck after telling me I should move to NYC.

Photograph of a boy in a bar on our first date, lit by flash, eyes already knowing.

Photograph of a man about to kiss me on a rooftop, the city lit up behind him.

“This is What You Always Wanted” is a series of true and untrue photographs based on real experiences with real boys that I sometimes loved and sometimes didn’t and sometimes only thought I did. They are a series of photographs and a series of small poems. Photographs in the sense that all photographs are both a description of a single moment and a fictitious rendering of the moment. Poems in the sense that singular sentences with an intense focus on feelings are automatically categorized as poetry.