Valentine’s Day always felt a little rehearsed.
Too much red and the expectation of being chosen out loud.
I was seventeen the year it made sense.
That was the year I learned people like my best friend and my boyfriend would look me in the eye and still choose to drunkenly hook up at a party the night before… casually. Like it happens every day.
It was almost impressive.
There’s something very efficient about betrayal when it comes from two directions at once. Saves time, I guess.
After that, the holiday kind of sorted itself out.
All the performative parts started to feel like set design. Like something built to hold a moment that may or may not be real, but photographs well either way.
Which isn’t to say intimacy isn’t real.
Just not always where it says it’s going to be.
Sometimes it looks like this instead quiet, close, unannounced.
No audience. No timing. No expectation
No need to prove anything beyond the moment itself.