9.5" x 6"

Dear Sophia,

    I've been thinking about you a lot recently. Whenever I'm happy or quiet or tired, I imagine you walking through the door or down the sidewalk, and I see you, and things feel whole, like snowfall at night or lying in the grass. There's half an Earth between us, but I can't help but think that you're still just up the hill, watching the crystal green sunset.
    And yet you're more distant than ever. I can't remember what you sound like, how you walk, the way your eyes move. I can't dream about you. I dream about everyone else (the record store girl, the angry liar, the silent redhead, my brother's ex-girlfriend, my former best friend) but never you. You're beyond simple sleep-stories. I've tried loving everyone else, and only you are honest.
    The weather has been hopeless without you. One minute it is the heat of the sun and the dusty smell of the present, and then it's thunder and dirty gray and uncertainty. We had some snow, and I thought of you.
    I remember you once said that while you were gone, there would be days where no one thought about you. You underestimated yourself. I am making sure to think about you every day, so that when you return I can tell you that you were wrong.
    Oh, how wonderful it will be to see you again! I often smile about you, and when others ask me what is so worth smiling about, I reply that they couldn't understand. How could they? They have never met you, never seen the shades of orange you paint on everything around you, never been scattered by your smiling fingers.
    I'm sorry you haven't received a letter from me in so long. I forget to send them to you. I write too many letters to you. I write them with my feet, tapping on the wooden floors. I write them with my eyes on a blank wall, and with my voice in cryptic sentences of longing. I forget which letters I can send and which must remain locked in cages and notebooks.
    I think I am more you than I am myself.

Thomas "And-The-Other" Street