Yes, it is the fourteenth. I am aware.

For You

A scheduled occasion is a poor excuse to say something true. I am going to say it anyway, and hope the date does not cheapen it.

Together since

Februaries, survived

Which is a lot of Februaries.

Before the sentimental part

I know exactly what this day is.

It is a commercial occasion with a marketing budget, and roughly nobody needs a specific Tuesday in February to be told they are loved.

But I am bad at doing this unprompted, and the day is a decent excuse to be less bad at it. So I am using it. Consider the cliché acknowledged, and everything after this sincere.

Not the greeting-card reasons.

Anyone can say kind, funny, beautiful. Those are true and they are also useless, because they would be true of a hundred people.

Here is what is actually specific. You are the only person I know who asks a second question. You apologise properly, without a clause attached. You are unreasonably patient with people who are being slow, and completely intolerant of people being cruel, and I have never once seen you get that balance the wrong way round.

That is the list. It is not romantic. It is just accurate.

Turn these over.

A short version on the front. The honest one underneath.

The evidence

The first one
The Valentine’s we both refused to acknowledge
We agreed it was commercial nonsense and then both turned up with something anyway.
Two years ago
The restaurant that lost our booking
We ate chips on a wall and it remains the best one.
Last year
You fell asleep at nine
Deeply romantic. I finished the film alone and told you it was terrible so you would not feel bad.

Us, unedited

Ours, apparently

The one we both pretend not to like

For after today

Because the day ends and the rest of it does not.

The day has passed and I still mean all of it. That was the point of putting it in writing.

Everything on this page survives an argument. That is the difference between this and a card.

You ask people the second question. Almost nobody does. It is a small thing and it is not a small thing.

Told again: I would pick you on an ordinary day, with no occasion and nothing at stake.

For the rest of the year

Things that are not just for today.

01To say the nice thing on the day I think it, not in February.

02To keep asking the second question back.

03To notice the effort before you have to point it out.

04To make an ordinary Wednesday feel deliberate at least once a month.

The day is invented.

The rest of it is not.

I would say all of this

on any ordinary Wednesday.

Since we are doing this properly.

A toast

Here’s to the other 364.

To the chips on the wall.

To every Valentine’s we handled badly.

To the ordinary Wednesdays that actually count.

And to next year, same nonsense, same person.

One more thing

We are going.

You mentioned it once, in passing, months ago, and then never brought it up again.

I wrote it down at the time.

The actual point of all this

I spend a lot of the year assuming you know all of this, which is a convenient assumption because it means I never have to say it.

You probably do know. But knowing something and being told it are different, and I have been coasting on the first one for a while.

So: I am glad it is you. Not in a scheduled-February way. In an ordinary, most-days, would-pick-you-again way.

— yours, on the fourteenth and otherwise

One invented day,

one genuine reason,

and a page that took far longer

than a card would have.

Worth it.

Happy Valentine’s.

Same again next year, and every ordinary day in between.

made for you