For Rasheedat

Plate I — The instrument

I built you an Ikometer.

A precision instrument for the measurement of beauty. Calibrated and tested exactly once. Take a reading.

Ikometer · Mk. I Cal. 21·02·2026

Instrument idle. Awaiting subject.

It has never once given a number I could print.

Plate II — The archive

Exhibits, in no particular order.

Assembled from my camera roll, which at this point is less a camera roll and more a shrine.

Rasheedat in red, at dusk — **Exhibit A**Red, at dusk. Subject declines to look at the camera. The camera does not mind.

“You wear maroon like somebody mixed the colour, looked at it, and said: this belongs to a girl in Nigeria called Rasheedat.”

Marginal note

Rasheedat outdoors — **Exhibit B**Before an outing. Note the composure.

Rasheedat in green — **Exhibit C**Full length, in green. Proof the maroon rule has exceptions.

Rasheedat in her lab coat — **Exhibit D**The white coat. Still a student, already the best thing in that building.

Rasheedat in the mirror, her name on the wall behind her — **Exhibit E**Her name written on the wall behind her, which is only fair.

Rasheedat, monochrome portrait — **Exhibit F**Monochrome. Take all the colour out and she is still the most striking thing in the frame.

Plate III — The kisses, catalogued

She blows a kiss in every single photograph.

I have been quietly collecting them. Five confirmed specimens below. Tap one to accept delivery — it has been waiting.

Kisses accepted this visit: 0 · Lifetime total: uncountable

Plate IV — Field notes

Everything I know about you, filed properly.

Nine entries. There are more, but the internet has limits and you do not.

Plate V — The letter

Read this one slowly.

To Rasheedat · on Girlfriend’s Day · 1 August 2026

I still think about how close I came to missing you. I sent a message, and Aisha answered it. That is the whole origin story, a wrong reply that turned out to be exactly the right one. I have never been so grateful to be redirected.

People describe love like it is one large, loud event. Mine isn’t. Mine is small and daily and stubborn: it is seeing something maroon on the road and immediately deciding it belongs to you. It is opening my phone to another photo of you blowing a kiss at a camera that did nothing to deserve it.

I watch you carry pharmacy school like it is a small thing. It is not a small thing. Nobody sees the reading, the labs, the weeks that ask for more than you have — and you do it anyway, and still show up gentle. I am prouder of you than I know how to say out loud.

You are the easiest thing in my life. Everything else I have to plan for, argue with, or build twice. You I simply love; no strategy, no version two. You are the sweetest thing I have, and I do not say that as a figure of speech.

So: happy Girlfriend’s Day, IKO. Thank you for the kisses, for the patience, for surviving that turkey long enough to get here. Today, and the several thousand ordinary days after it.

Yours, always,
Alli Written for one reader · never reprinted

Plate VI — Draw a card

Whenever you miss me, turn one over.

There are fourteen. You will not run out.