a small
universefor my Bubu

My Bubu,

It's your birthday!! I've genuinely been excited for today for weeks – I wanted to build you something instead of just telling you something, because you have a way of making ordinary things feel bigger than they are, and I figured your birthday deserved that back.

Here's what I notice, watching you move through the world: you are the most grounded person I know, and also the least afraid to dream out loud. You'll sit with someone through their worst day and understand it before they've finished explaining it – and twenty minutes later you're planning a trip to somewhere neither of us has been, completely certain it's happening. It usually does. I used to think that was luck. I've stopped thinking that.

You believe things into being. I've watched you do it with plans, with people, with rooms that were flat until you walked into them. So this year, on your birthday, I wanted to hand a few of those beliefs back to you – written down, so you have proof that someone else sees them too.

Okay – scroll on, there's more waiting for you.