Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton

A universal, silent Morse code for I’m here, I love you. At that moment I realized that everything had changed: we had transitioned. We had chosen each other. We were family. Farly and I had always been each other’s plus ones for every day of each other’s lives. We were each other’s sidekicks at every family dinner, every holiday, every party. We have never properly rowed unless steaming drunk on a night out. We have never lied to each other. In over fifteen years, I have never gone more than a few hours without thinking about her. I only make sense with her there to act as my foil and vice versa. Without the love of Farly, I am just a heap of frayed and half-finished thoughts; of blood and muscle and skin and bone and unachievable dreams and a stack of shit teenage poetry under my bed. My mess only takes a proper shape with that familiar and favourite piece of my life standing next to me. We know the names of all our grandparents and our childhood toys and we know the exact words that, when put in a certain order, will make each other laugh or cry or shout. There isn’t a pebble on the beach of my history that she has left unturned. She knows where to find everything in me and I know where all her stuff is too. She is, in short, my best friend.