Terms and Conditions for Dating an Owl
By Penelope the Owl
They tell me I should put myself out there. They tell me love might come when I least expect it. They tell me lots of things, and I nod and pretend I haven't heard it all before, usually from married people who found their soulmates in college and now think they understand the quantum physics of romance.
So here I sit, drafting the contract nobody asked for, because if I can't control love, I can at least pretend to regulate it. Call it emotional bureaucracy. Call it self-preservation wrapped in wit. Call it Tuesday.
Article I: Basic Requirements
If you're under thirty, kindly see yourself out. I've already raised three barn owlets who thought they invented existentialism, and I'm not running a daycare for adults who still think "hanging out" counts as a date. Immortal forest spirits with academic credentials may apply for special exemption, because standards are standards until someone interesting shows up.
Love books or leave. Not the Instagram-worthy shelves arranged by color—I mean proper books, wounded soldiers with cracked spines and coffee rings, survivors of late-night battles with loneliness. Show me your marginalia. Show me which pages made you weep. If you tell me you "don't have time to read," I'll know everything I need to know about how you'll treat my heart.
Article II: The Language of Love (and Other Myths)
I speak fluent sarcasm with a minor in bitter observation. You needn't match my vocabulary, but if you respond to my carefully crafted emotional disclosure with "lol," I'll assume you're having a stroke and call emergency services. Or I'll just add you to my collection of disappointments, filed somewhere between "The One Who Preferred His Mother" and "The One Who Called Virginia Woolf 'Wordy.'"
Response time: forty-eight hours maximum. After that, I'll assume bandits kidnapped you, your phone died a tragic death, or—more likely—you've ghosted me like everyone else in this digital wasteland we call modern dating.
Article III: The Mathematics of Intimacy
I require touch the way plants require sunlight—desperately, but on my schedule. Surprise affection registers as assault. My feathers aren't decoration; they're armor. Approach accordingly.
Those "low-touch" relationship seekers should date furniture. At least furniture stays where you put it.
Article IV: Full Disclosure (The Fine Print Nobody Reads)
One tragic barn dance left me convinced all slow songs end in tears. Three emotionally unavailable badgers taught me that woodland creatures make terrible life partners. One particularly vicious book club showed me that shared interests don't equal emotional safety. My therapist calls it "progress" that I'm writing this at all.
When overwhelmed, I retreat to my mental library, where I've cataloged every rejection by genre and subgenre. You can't follow me there. The door locks from the inside, and the key dissolves in whiskey.
Article V: Rules of Engagement
Arguments follow a prescribed pattern: intellectual sparring, wounded silence, grudging compromise, bourbon. Anyone who calls me "too much" gets their walking papers and a permanent spot on The List—yes, it exists, yes, it's laminated, yes, my cousin guards it with her life.
Violence, verbal or otherwise, means immediate termination. I've been hurt by experts; amateurs need not apply.
Article VI: The Escape Clause
Leave whenever you like—this isn't prison, though sometimes love feels like one. Just return my books, apologize like you mean it, and stay away from my cousin with the Etsy shop. She makes vindictive candles that smell like regret and burn like karma.
Postscript
Under all this armor beats a heart that remembers birthdays, notices when you're sad, and knits scarves for people who've earned them. I'll defend your strangest dreams with alarming intensity. I'll remember how you take your tea.
But make no mistake—this isn't casual. This is a six-hundred-word warning wrapped in feathers and tied with a bitter ribbon. This is me, saying I'm terrified but willing. This is my heart, annotated and footnoted, waiting for someone who reads the fine print.
Sign below if you dare. Use permanent ink. Everything else fades.
(Written at 3 AM, after two whiskeys and one particularly brutal swipe left)