bare bones and skin
There’s a certain pressure in trying to write about someone you love. My words may never be enough. I’ll have to show you how my veins resemble hers, how full and tender my heart has become. I doubted there was something inside my chest keeping me alive. Now I see it in ladybugs and the way the rain makes me feel light.
I have to warn you that this will sound like a letter sent from a lover to another, but I will argue that this transcends romance. I hold in my hands something that I sometimes don’t feel I deserve, yet would tirelessly search for in this lifetime and the next.
To be loved is to be known; that was what we all knew. I envied people with someone who knew their favorite song, or the first cereal they’d grab at the grocery, or the meaning behind their middle name. Somewhere in my notes, I’ve written my answers in case someone asks — Bees by the Ballroom Thieves, Frosties but without milk, and an old French word that meant ‘oak grove’. My dream was to be called anak1 by someone’s mother or father, or ate2 by someone’s brother or sister. I prayed for a moment when I’d enter a room, knowing a seat was saved for me. Like a child waiting for a shooting star, I held onto hope until hope turned into tall walls and icy independence.
It is only when you’ve been given everything you asked for that you realize that you have been wrong all along.
My best friend, Addie, knew the songs I love and hate. She may not have seen me grab Frosties, but she knew the way I’d stare at the stall of Lemondou and debate with myself for five minutes whether or not I should grab some, then immediately get distracted at the sight of a long-sought-after bottle of garlic aioli. She knew not only what my name meant, but as well as my rising sign, my Hogwarts house, my fear of platypus, my restlessness, my aversion to skinship, the password to all my bank accounts, my starter Pokemon, my hate for banana ketchup, the number of drinks i can tolerate, my sister’s talents, all my diagnoses, how much I craved for the other half of my soul, and how glad I am I found it in her.
Here’s something I realized.
There may be some truth in the relation of familiarity and affection, but I only now see that the true measure of intimacy is in vulnerability. To be loved is to be shown bare bones and skin. It is only then that I fully grasped how loved I am, by how much I was let into her life.
Oh how loved I am to be allowed to know how she makes her coffee (milk and coffee, no sugar like a psychopath), how she only likes black or blue on her nails, how her hair never goes wrong, the way she never moves when asleep or how freaking impossible it is to wake her up in the morning, how my relatives now her not by name but as my best friend, how my mom asks for her to visit and even cooks curry for her. How loved I am to be allowed in her orbit.
Addie, between the two of us, you’re the one who’s good at writing letters with much ardor; the one whose desk is lined with stickers, stamps, cords, and passion. I don’t have any kind of flashery — just a trick of the light, some words, and all my bare bones and skin.
This piece was originally posted on Substack on October 27, 2025 and migrated to BearBlog on March 19, 2026.