1. When you first caught him stealing glances at you from the corner of the room, you couldn't have possibly imagined the life you'd soon lead.
2. You'll never need to walk to the corner store after school again. His book bag is a CVS. Full with all of the things you'd never need more than once in a lifetime. He tells you that he's stolen so many precious parts of people that there is no longer a difference between losing everything and losing nothing.
3. When you finally say yes after he asks for the 200th time if he can come over and you're cuddling underneath your favorite blanket, I beg you to cling to it for dear life because he will yank that shit from you the minute you fall asleep.
4. Don't let it slip that you've never been in love, he will make it his mission to get you to allow him access and attachment to your heart. Please keep in mind that everything he snatches, he owns indefinitely.
5. You'd be best off trying to differentiate the meaning between theft and sacrifice, so give him your time when he wants it, even though you'd rather just spend time with Elliot Stabler that day. Offer him up your bleeding mouth, all salt and tongue when his skin is hungry. Give up your sleep when he’d rather give you tongue lashings. Give him 4 hours and 43 minutes of your yearning soul on FaceTime, when all you want to do is melt into your bed sheets like a hot knife through butter. Let him cradle your aching brain in his strong palms until it is small enough to run away with.
6. When you stop keeping an eye on your grades in progress book, don’t be so surprised if they go missing.
7. When Ciarnello asks if you have any new poems for him, tell him that you can't think about poetry when you let a stranger off of the Internet borrow your passion a year ago and you haven't felt the same since.
8. He will pickpocket your self esteem anytime you get too far ahead in loving yourself. He will plunder you from fearless to feeble the second you place your fears in a google document.
9. I wonder if he is the reason why your teachers tell you that if you decide to leave your phone unattended to charge in class it is not their fault if it comes up missing.
10. Your phone he will not hesitate to come up missing.
11. I found out that what didn't kill me never made me stronger, and that your skin won't look thicker than an alligators when it heals.
12. Don't bother with the trick of retracing your heavy steps to find yourself. He reminds you of all the parts of yourself that he never allowed you to meet.
13. How could you not realize the night your dad bought you a gold necklace before he went to jail, for the first time you could remember anyway, that love is the most sinister kind of robbery there is. Love is the scene in Spider-Man of the slow-motion stickup against uncle Ben that you just cannot get insured against. The worst part of dating a thief is realizing that even after they clean you out, there is nothing you can do to rebuild or replace the scattered shambles of your life. You will never get yourself back.
14. And I waited an entire year just to ask him, "What do you truly want with the shattered pieces of my future?" He tells me that when you’re not sure what you really want, just take everything.
-k.w.
