Today is Valentine’s Day.

This is our annual opportunity to bungle the things we say and fail to make clear the ways we feel. Love is ugly, strange, and inarticulable. It is not nice or fair, but it is the main thing anyone cares about, and it’s good to have a holiday where we say that out loud as a group. But what is the best way to do it?

Every year, we’re stuck with the same handful of options for expressing our most embarrassing inner monologues about the people in our lives. Those choices, as dictated by the forces of capitalism, are chocolate, flowers, Hallmark cards, songs written and performed by Phil Collins, framed photographs of key life moments, songs written and performed by Sting, or tickets to a romantic comedy starring a…

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