Yours

January 18th

Dear Sophia,

I love you. I miss you. It’s been so long. It’s been two weeks now. Two weeks is two weeks too long. This isn’t how our year was meant to start. This isn’t how things were meant to go. There’s still time before Valentine’s but things don’t feel right at the moment.

I feel like I don’t know I’m definitely going to see you again. If you never came back I think I’d collapse. I wouldn’t have anything. The only thing I can rely on wouldn’t be there anymore.

I’m worried but I’m not angry. I just want to see you and know you’re ok. I have the picture with me but that seems so long ago. It looks like it’s from a different time. Starbucks has new big pictures of coffee beans and stuff up now. The background in this picture doesn’t even exist anymore. It makes me feel like you don’t really exist anymore. You could have had your haircut different to how it is in the photo. You’re probably wearing different clothes. For all I know you’re not really smiling now either. I just want you to smile. If I can’t see you I don’t know how I’m meant to make sure you’re smiling. I’m trying not to worry something bad has happened but I can’t help it.

I saw on the news about what’s happened in the Dominican Republic. I wasn’t even sure exactly where that was until they showed a map of it. There were horrible pictures on the front pages of all the papers. They’re stuck in my head. I’ve watched everything I could find about it on T.V. Apparently it struck right in the middle of a really populated area. They had footage of buildings shaking. The hospitals were saying people were brought in after being hit with debris. Apparently an old church collapsed immediately and trapped some people inside. I don’t know if they ever got out. I’ve not been able to find the rest of the story. There’s lots of different stories on the internet about terrible things that have happened and terrible things that might have happened. It’s hard to keep up. The first person to die was an old man in an old people’s home who got knocked out when something knocked him over. He just never woke up. Since then they haven’t really bothered telling you about individual people dying. They said that they know it’s at least fifty people who died but it could be in the hundreds. They said thousands and thousands of homes have been damaged and it’s been declared a state of emergency. I don’t really know what that means but you only ever hear that when it’s serious. They say lots of the damage might never get repaired because they don’t know if the infrastructure can take it. They showed footage of people being evacuated but I couldn’t work out if that was from before the earthquake or after. They showed these people walking down the side of the street covered in dust from the rubble and one of the women looked a bit like you. I got down in front of the T.V but they cut away from her face. I tried to find the same news report online but I couldn’t find the same clip. They would usually say if any British people had got hurt I think. I’m praying it wasn’t you. It didn’t look exactly like you but I don’t know what you look like today. It’s just made me worry so much about the idea of you never coming back. People go to places like that all the time on holiday now. I don’t think that’s where you went. I don’t really believe that you’re there it’s just the idea of you being there that’s getting to me. I hope you can see now why it’s so awful if I don’t know exactly where you are. Everything makes me worry about you unless I know you’re safe. I need to know.

I love you. That’s the only thing I want you to know. Nothing else matters. I just want you to be safe.

I love you.

Yours,

Andrew