Yours

January 12th

Dear Sophia,

I love you.

It was kind of sunny this morning. It was still cold but it was really bright for January. The sky was pretty much completely clear. It made me think it must be really nice to be away somewhere warm and sunny at the moment. I’m not sure where we should go on holiday together first.

Even though it’s the weekend I still walked past Starbucks a few times just in case you’d come back and popped in there for a drink. I didn’t see you. It’s much easier to deal with not seeing you when I’ve got other things I need to be doing. Especially when I’m planning our future together.

I went and picked up some holiday brochures. I remember when I was a kid my mum used to always have them out. She’d sit on the sofa watching T.V flicking through them. If I asked where we were going on holiday she’d always say she was just getting ideas. I thought it was a bit silly. There’s no point just looking at something you want to do every day if you aren’t going to do anything about it.

I’ve got all these brochures for us. Once I know what the best one for us is I’ll make sure we do it. What I’ve been doing is flicking through and looking at the pictures. Anything that looks nice I’ve read up about.

I’ve realised most of the things in these brochures are cheaper online anyway. You just type in the place and loads and loads of options come up. It’s still much nicer to flick through the actual pictures in the brochures though.

I’ve been to France before when I was very young. I wonder if that’s what put it in my head that I should learn French. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been to Spain a couple of times too. Although I think maybe once it was Spain and once it was Majorca.

We should definitely go off the beaten track together. It looks like there are some amazing places in South America that are completely different to here. There are so many options for us. We can do them all. There’s a holiday here that includes seeing the giant Jesus statue in Brazil and going round the city but also spending some time on the beach. That seems pretty perfect to me. They arrange it all for you so we wouldn’t have to worry about anything. I’ll keep looking though. I’ve got your photo next to me while I look. You look even prettier next to the beaches.

I wrote another poem about being away from you. I’ve written it in French. I know you can’t speak French but I wanted to show you how well my French is doing.

Je veux que vous sachiez

une chose.

Vous savez comment c’est:

si je regarde

à la lune de cristal, à la branche rouge

de l’automne lente à ma fenêtre,

si je touche

près du feu

la cendre impalpable

ou le corps de ridés de la bille,

tout me porte à vous,

comme si tout ce qui existe,

arômes, la lumière, les métaux,

étaient petits bateaux

qui naviguent

vers ces îles à toi qui m’attendent.

I love you.

Yours,

Andrew