Bonnie and Clyde: A Correction

They were not romantic. They were young and poor and armed, which America has always confused with romance. She was a waitress. He was a thief before he was a legend. The difference between the two is a camera and a car and dying photogenically. They robbed small banks in small towns where the money was almost as desperate as they were— and we called them heroes because we've always loved anyone who steals from institutions we secretly hate. Bonnie wrote poems. Bad ones, mostly. But the last one— "The Trail's End"— knew exactly how the story ended: bullets, a country road, the car still running. She was twenty-three. He was twenty-five. That's the part the movies always forget to make you feel— how young twenty-three is when it's the last number you'll ever be. We put them on T-shirts now. We name cocktails after them. We say "ride or die" without considering that die was always the more likely outcome. Love doesn't make an outlaw story beautiful. Youth does. And youth is the one thing no one gets to keep.