Dear future roommate:

I'm so excited to start this next chapter of my life with you! College is an exciting time, and an apartment is the next big step towards living on our own. I'm sure that as long as we respect each other's boundaries, we'll both be fine. I'd like to offer one of my own right now, if you don't mind. You will allow me to go through your belongings, check them thoroughly, and execute any and all small succulents among them.

We will not keep these succulents. We will not water, feed, or humor them. We will not put them in terrariums. We will not artfully arrange them and take pictures of them for our Instagrams. We will only smother them in gasoline, set them ablaze, and send them tumbling down the fire escape like fucking Denethor, and even that is more than they deserve.

This precept extends to any and all succulent-related items. I do not want to see succulent art, succulent posters, succulent journals, succulent laptop stickers, succulent bookmarks, or a single succulent-themed actual succulent.

I do not care that succulents are renter-friendly, low-maintenance, and resilient. I do not care that all your friends have them. I do not care about the hashtag #suclife. I do not care that they go with practically any other decoration. I do not care about your carefully manicured Pinterest board. If succulents are your aesthetic, your aesthetic is unholy in the eyes of nature. I will dismember each and every one of your small, water-retaining bastards and personally send them back to hell.

Where they belong.

We will not make a succulent cake. We will not make succulent cookies. We will not have succulents on our windowsill or on our counter. We will walk through the "home decoration" aisle at Target with our hands over our eyes so that we will not see them.

Succulents grow native in arid regions with high heat. Good. They know their place. Let them stay in their world; do not invite them into ours. There is an order to things.

If I see one in our house, it will burn until it knows the meaning of God's vengeance. Others will fall, not us.