February 14, differently

You each wear a ring, you sit facing each other, and you press Begin. From there, there is nothing to do. No screen to watch, no instruction to follow, nobody in the room but the two of you.

Half an hour is enough. The protocol accepts ten minutes minimum and one hour maximum, but thirty minutes is where couples naturally stop. What gets said during that time does not leave the room: nothing is listened to, nothing is filmed, only variations in the heartbeat are recorded.

If you do not know what to say, that is what the protocol is for. Ten questions, in a chosen order, asked out loud. It is a document to print, not an app to consult.

Rings leave the studio within three business days and take one to two weeks to arrive. February is also the month postal services slow under the weight of the holiday. Allow three weeks to be comfortable, so an order placed in the third week of January.

If you are reading this in February, there is one honest way out: order anyway, and give the announcement on the 14th. The evening happens the following week, or the following month. Nothing expires, no date is held, and the moment loses nothing by not landing on the exact day.

The artwork ships about two weeks after your evening. It is a gift received twice, a month apart.

A Valentine’s gift has to solve a contradictory equation: say something personal, without having to write it yourself. That is what pushes so many people towards the engraved object, which rarely says anything beyond a date.

Here, you are not the one writing. The final shape comes from what your two bodies did while you sat facing each other. You choose an artwork and two colours; the rest escapes you entirely, and that is what makes the artwork impossible to reproduce, including by you.

What it does not do: read your feelings. A heartbeat says something happened, never what. The artwork tells nothing of what you said to each other that evening.

Two ring sizes are asked for at checkout. Quietly measure the inner diameter of a ring they already wear, and size up if you hesitate.

On the day, what you hand over is a box with two rings and a charger. It is not obvious at first glance, and that is a good flaw: it has to be explained, and the explanation is part of the gift.