Annulments

Rome takes two years to annul a marriage. I take twenty minutes and cash.

The barn behind the convent. Friday nights. Bring your marriage certificate and a good reason. Bad reasons cost extra.

I do the Latin myself. I do the bishop's signature better than the bishop. I've had more practice.

Mrs. Delgado wanted out of thirty years with a man who snored. Forty dollars.

Mr. Delgado came the next Friday. He wanted out of thirty years with a woman who never stopped talking. Sixty.

They still live together. Neither one knows the other is free.

I wrote the reasons I accept on the barn wall. The list got long. Then it got specific.

The bishop nailed a board over it.

That Friday he came back with a marriage certificate of his own.

I didn't know bishops could be married.

Neither did Rome.

Photographed, not generated. Salton Sea, 1 May 2016.

The board was added for the website. The signed print shows the original wall, uncensored.

Own the memory: a signed limited edition of 50, pigment on aluminum, in three sizes.