Ways to say that thing you’ve never said

1st Prize in Flash 500 (2025)

You could give me a cup of overly sweet tea in my favourite mug, the one with the thin rim, which I swear makes the tea taste better; or you could swing round a lamppost like that bloke in the film, and I would laugh when you tried to sing the song because you don’t really know it; or you could leave post-it notes in strange places that describe things you like about me, and they’d probably be things I don’t like about me at all, eg: the skin tag on my neck or the fact my vowels are still flat; or you could dress up as Father Christmas in the middle of Spring and stuff a giant sock full of tiny silver teaspoons, and they would all be wrapped badly because you were in a rush to get into costume before I woke up; or you could buy me a new toothbrush because mine is disgraceful; or you could take me to Splashdown where we would zoom about on flumes, screaming like children; or you could record me singing in the shower and play it back to me and tell me that I am actually extremely good at singing and that I should do it more; or you could come to my hot power yoga class in small green Speedos and pretend to be Spanish because you know it would make me laugh; or you could put me in a spaceship and fly me to the moon where you have plotted a special picnic with the Starmen and my beautiful dead cat, who I miss terribly, but never talk about, and we would all have giant prawn cocktails; or you could learn how to make vongole in exactly the same way as that place in Florence where it was becoming increasingly clear that we might quite like to spend the rest of our lives together; or you could buy a steam train and put all my favourite people on it and we would chug around the world, marvelling at this extraordinary adventure we are all on and how lucky we are to be alive.

Or, you know, you could just tell me?