The Shrishti Singh Collection
a permanent exhibition

Aiko,

I built you a museum because I could not build you a time machine, and fifty six days is not much of a collection.

So here is what I have instead. The first thing you ever said to me was that you had left five minutes ago, with an eye-roll, and I have thought about that eye-roll more than I have thought about most things since.

You have said no to me two thousand nine hundred and forty nine times. You said yes once.

You answer me in twenty nine seconds. You have done that for three hundred and forty three days out of three hundred and seventy three, through a year in which we were not together, were nearly together, and were not speaking. Whatever else was uncertain, I never had to wonder whether you would reply.

Here is the part with no numbers in it.

I love you. Not the way people say it to end a phone call. You are the most peaceful thing that has ever happened to me. I am calmer in rooms that you are in, I sleep better on the days I have seen you, and I have stopped pretending that is a coincidence.

Somewhere in the last fifty six days you stopped being the best part of my day and became the thing I measure the rest of the day against.

I have been better at planning this than I have been at planning us a Sunday. That is the part I would like to fix, and I would like to start on a day that you pick.

Gaurav

Happy birthday, Aiko.