He saw my book, that thief and began casting poetry from his lips, poems that I suspected were in my book, poems that I probably had been gazing at moments before and barely noticed. I noticed them now.

The thief was, despite his calling, a cultured man. In fact he owed much of himself to his occupation. He once told me that since the day he's chosen his path he'd never paid for anything. So his clothes rarely fitted and his diet was sporadic (with a memorable face like his, running from restaurants could only be reserved for special occasions) he'd never sold anything he'd stolen, his flat could have belonged to a doddery old uncle perhaps, the clutter was so present. I asked him once why he never profited from his thefts, he merely smiled and said that he would then have been a criminal, as it was he was merely a thief. It all seemed to make sense to him.

And there he was, the thief, sprinkling poetry all over me, his fingers still plucking, his gaze alternating from me to the flower. He was quite a master of the written

word, though I do not recall ever catching him with a pen in hand save when he wrote in his precious stolen books. He was more of a talker, letting his words escape from him and come to rest in whatever ear they might find or often merely letting them escape with the wind going the way that, I suppose, so many beautiful words go.

He had a lot of poetry. I used to imagine him, dressed in black in someone's apartment, his soundless feet finding their way to a bookshelf, his silent hands reaching out, stroking for dust, for he only ever stole neglected books. And then quickly he would depart, a toaster perhaps under one arm and some ornament that had taken his fancy in the bag over his shoulders, the book tucked neatly, studiously in the back of his trousers.

They lay everywhere in his flat those books, a swarm of paper rats that never deserted ship. Each one on its inside-cover catalogued with the date stolen, the place and perhaps a thought for that day, or even one for the owner.

To say I didn't take the discovery that he was a thief well would be true. In fact, looking back it seems so childish. I suppose the bubbles of excitement that a new relationship fills you with warped my judgement. I laughed with glee, and hugged him. I felt like a teenager going out with the rebel just to spite my parents. And I felt great, until the first night I spent with him and he went out. I lay there awake waiting, staring at the ceiling, worrying. I think I must have aged a great deal that night. I was livid by the time he returned. I had resigned myself to anger, no weakness shown. But, like an orchestral conductor, he controlled me, his sweeping, gliding words lifting me and bringing my anger down. He seduced me.

In the morning my anger was back.

"You must stop"

"I cannot, not even for you"

So I turned my back on him and left. He was a good thief though and pretty soon he had his reluctant prize back. That, I suppose, was the turning point and when I finally surrendered my reluctance I was his.

I used to spend days and nights on that floor, amidst all the clutter, my after-sex dreamy head roaming for books, for thoughts from my lover. The words that he wrote in other people's thoughts from other people's homes.

I ran away the first time that he came home bleeding. It was too much, patching him up, feeling his face swelling in my hands. I had screamed at him, no tears for him but for myself.

"You stupid, stupid bastard", I had slapped him as I shouted.

"Why, why?", but I knew why, "I hate you, I hate what you do", why is that hate is only an action away from love?

So I ran and left him, his words, "Its hard not to get hurt when you won't hurt back", lingering as I left his flat behind.

But, just as he could not live without his vocation, I could not live without him.

The only time he ever sold anything he stole (as far as I was aware) was so he could take me to Orleans.

He never told me why he took me there, perhaps it was just that Paris was a cliché. Of course it was still in the springtime and after a dusty walk by the river, watching the lazy boats go by, we sat on a beautiful cobbled street drinking pastis and laughing together.

He took nothing while we were there, for three whole days I pretended we had a normal life. On the last day he told me that if he ever worked out how to steal a house that he would steal it here. I didn't disagree. And as the shadows lengthened on that same cobbled street I looked at him and completely loved.

Once he brought me home a kitten, I was horrified.

"You can't steal living things", I had cried.

He had looked at me and smiled, "You can if they want to be stolen".

The kitten looked as if it did, as I'm sure I had in the park. But I cried, nonetheless, as if I was the little girl who might have lost this pretty kitten, I cried because I felt as helpless as it, and because I felt as at home here in the midst of lives stolen as I ever had anywhere.

When he was finally arrested they took everything away, leaving only the cat and I. We mewed together on the floor of an empty apartment that would soon contain only the dust of a thousand memories.

The first thing he had said to me from inside that prison was, "There's nothing to steal here. they took everything, everything I stole and with it they took my thoughts". He had cried and I so wanted to say something but the choking tears came just before the warden and I couldn't even hold out my hand to touch him before the prison spat me out.