A few days around Valentine’s week, we received a Blinkit delivery—and with it, an unexpectedly thoughtful piece of packaging.
On one side of the box was a drawn bouquet, neatly cut out, clearly meant to be coloured and gifted. On the other side was something even more intriguing: a collection of 32 individual words, meant to be cut out and rearranged into a quote or greeting of your own making.
Naturally, my wife was excited. She immediately decided that this was something we should do together.
Being the artist between the two of us, she took charge of colouring the bouquet and preparing it. I, meanwhile, was handed the words and given the task of turning them into something meaningful.
These were the words:
I | to | say | you | we | small | things | light | up | the | evening | kept | quiet | gently | held | warm | hands | together | forgot | noticed | anyway | ordinary | beside | through | halfway | closer | showing | again | still | somehow | laughing | moments
At first glance, they felt incomplete—almost deliberately so. After a fair bit of thinking, I realised I could easily make multiple short quotes from them. Perhaps that was the intention all along: that everyone would create something uniquely their own.
But the writer inside me wasn’t satisfied.
It took it as a personal challenge—maybe even an ego thing—to use all the words and make one complete piece out of them.
After struggling for a while, I did what most of us eventually do: I turned to ChatGPT for help.
The results were… terrible.
Utter garbage, honestly.
And oddly enough, that was reassuring. It reminded me why AI can assist a writer but can’t be one. The heart of writing still belongs to humans.
So I tried a different approach.
I like rhymes. I like patterns. I started by grouping words that could echo each other emotionally or phonetically. Then I began arranging words that had the fewest possible combinations—locking them into place early so they wouldn’t trip me up later.
ChatGPT helped in a very specific, practical way: sorting the words, keeping track of what I’d already used, and preventing repetition. But the thinking, the choosing, the feeling—that part stayed human.
Slowly, with time and a bit of stubbornness, something began to take shape.
In the end, I came up with this:
We kept quiet, held warm hands together
Gently beside you, somehow closer
Laughing moments light up the evening
Noticed halfway through ordinary small things
I forgot to say
Still showing again anyway.
My wife liked it.
And honestly, that was all that mattered. At the end of the day, it was written for her.
This is the best my mind could come up with. I’d love to hear your thoughts—and I’d love to see how you would have used the same words. Feel free to share your own version in the comments.
Who knows? Maybe you’ll create something truly iconic.
This is such a lovely piece—quietly romantic, playful, and deeply human in the best way. What I enjoyed most isn’t just the final poem (which is tender and beautifully balanced), but the honesty of the journey you describe: the hesitation, the wrestling with words, the refusal to settle for something that didn’t feel right.
The bit about AI being useful but not creative in the human sense really landed. Tools can help with structure, but meaning still comes from lived moments—warm hands, shared silences, laughter that needs no explanation. Your poem captures exactly that: how love often hides in the “ordinary small things” we notice only halfway through an evening.
Also, Blinkit accidentally becoming a catalyst for collaboration, art, and intimacy is delightful. There’s something poetic about love emerging from a cardboard box meant for groceries.
Most of all, the closing line says everything: your wife liked it. That’s the real metric.
A beautiful reminder that writing doesn’t have to be iconic for the world—sometimes it just needs to be perfect for one person.
My poem with those words, which you may like:
Small things lit the evening.
Your warm hands held mine—
quiet and steady.
Halfway home, we leaned closer—
laughing, forgetting the world,
remembering us.
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