I Don’t Want to Leave the Night With You

I don’t want to leave the night with you.

I just want my heart to stay right there with you.

If only you could come too, my heart would never leave because my heart forever beats for you.

It may have come as a shock to you what I daydream about when you are not around.

Someone asked me a question: what happens in the ten years you have unopened?

There is an unopened, sealed envelope with my fate in writing.

I have yet to open it.

It is signed, sealed, and delivered, and what is behind it I will never know.

I guess it will take me ten years to find out what my daydreams are about.

But I know in my heart I know what is true.

I know that I will see you soon, even if my reality doesn’t believe it.

I know it will happen, even if I cannot only see it in my daydreams.

My mind may start the night with just one thought, but when it comes to morning, my daydreams enter the doors, and I hold them open to see what they will bring.

And what they brought me were new dreams and new people who I have opened my heart to, but I still have never forgotten about you.

And it may be only a daydream of you that I can ever think about you, but I think about you at night too, and it seems like these dreams have turned into daydreams.

Every moment I thought was gone has come to visit me in the daytime, and I am fighting with my mind to keep these daydreams alive.

And hopefully, one day they will come to life.

And someone once asked what will you see in the ten years to come.

Well, here are some of my dreams that I hope will become more than daydreams:

The ten-year question:

If I were to wake up today and see that all my dreams have become reality of course I would go and investigate and see how much my life has changed and I would wonder if the same people were still there and I would check my phone to see what day it is and what year and if I wake up and I am already in the future I would expect that I met my someone that I have been waiting for after all it has been ten years since I had my dream of him one day coming into my life and I would also like to see if I eventually became someone in a successful career and if I ever met any of my friends in real life and if they came to me in real time and even if I finally got to meet my brother who I have not seen in a long time and if I ever got my dream house and what my life looks like from ten years ago to ten years later.

The alternate timeline:

If I could travel back in time, one decision I would have wanted to revisit would be the last day I was at high school.

I would have wanted to ask my best friend Gabriel Diaz if he would have wanted to go to prom with me. I would have asked for his phone number.

I wish I would have called out to him that day.

He rode his bike right by me.

I wish he would have stopped and looked back at me.

Then maybe I wouldn’t have lost contact with him and I wouldn’t be waiting for him to get in touch with me.

That is one thing I would have changed.

The reunion:

If I could meet someone again in real time, I would meet Gabriel Diaz and Damian Roca at the high school reunion for the class of ‘2020.

I would love to have asked them about that same day that we left high school when COVID-19 started, but I would also tell them that I thank them for what they did and that they chose to walk away without hurting me anymore and that I did not stop him from riding his bike away from me because I think the space was needed for us to grow up and follow our dreams, so I actually don’t regret that decision, but I do wish I would have tried to call out to him, but I don’t think he would have wanted me to.

I think he would have wanted the space to have grown up, but I do know that he probably regrets it.

I know that I don’t, and then sometimes I do, but sometimes life doesn’t work like we want to, but I do hope that the reunion does happen, and those are the people that are at the top of my list for a high school reunion petition.

I will never forget someone from my senior class.

Zach said, “ I want to see you at the reunion with a partner and with kids.”

Well, I don’t know about the kids part, but a partner I will hopefully be there with, but even if that doesn’t happen, I hope I will be there.

So, Zach, I will see you there. 🤞

In the year of 2030 or twenty years from the year I graduated.

I also agree with Sudeshna Hajra about meeting old friends and even new friends who feel like family, and even though we met online and I may not know everything about you all, I already feel like we are great friends and family, and even one person in particular feels like my best friend ♾️ for life, and even more than that, they are like my family.

They know who they are, and if you know, you know.

If I did go to the high school reunion, I would like to reintroduce everyone to the woman I am today and what has changed in my life and the career path I have chosen to pursue and maybe even see what I have accomplished in the future.

It would be nice to see the inside of the high school halls again and reunite with my high school self again.

I think I have missed her too, so I hope to see her again as well.

Silhouette of Starry Thoughts thank you for sharing this weekly prompt.

I love it.

Please do more of these.

I would love to continue participating in them.

I am sorry if I am late to the party with these weekly prompts, but I really do like them.

I will try to look out for the next one.

Paulia Dianz. A🧡 thank you for your amazing publication and truly making it feel like a place to call home. 🏠 There is no truly no place like home.

Thank you to everyone who I have met online here.

You have truly made me feel like part of the family, and I am glad to have friends like you.

I know we may not know each other that way, but I hope the feeling is mutual.

So thank you all for everything you have given me.

I am glad to have met you, and a special thank you to Sudeshna Hajra.

I know that we may not know each other, but I just wanted to thank you for inspiring this post, and I really did love your story.

Thank you everyone for all that you have done for me, and thank you for allowing me to share my story with you and to be a part of your lives, whether it is as a friend or a fellow reader.

Thank you for letting me into your medium family.

What Do You Daydream About? — Weekly Prompt #6

This story is published in “A Place Called Home” — a warm corner for real voices and honest hearts. Have a story of your own? Share it with us,“Where Your Words Feel Home.”

'A Place Called Home' —  Welcome To Our New Publication

What Do You Daydream About? — Weekly Prompt was originally published in A Place Called Home on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How the ancient stones of Jerusalem stripped away dogma and taught me what faith truly means. Some places exist only on maps; others carve themselves into your consciousness, permanently altering the lens through which you view humanity.

For me, that place is Jerusalem.

Before I set foot within its weathered limestone ramparts, religion lived in my mind much like it does for most people: defined by boundaries, inherited traditions, sacred texts, and neat little compartments. We grow up convinced that faith is a flag we carry, a set of doctrines that belongs exclusively to our community and distinguishes us from the rest of the world. We are taught to look for differences.

Jerusalem destroyed that illusion within an hour of my arrival.

I still remember walking into the Old City, where thousands of years of human longing are packed into barely one square kilometre. The polished flagstones underfoot were slick, worn smooth by millions of pilgrim feet across centuries — kings, soldiers, mendicants, and wanderers.

Standing there, the sensory collision was overwhelming. From one minaret, the resonant cadence of the Adhan rolled across the rooftops, calling the faithful to bow before the Divine. Just a few steps away, through narrow archways scented with frankincense, cardamom, and beeswax, church bells rang out from the ancient cupolas of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Down below, at the Western Wall, I watched men and women pressed against the towering, sun-warmed Herodian stones, weeping quietly, rocking back and forth in prayer, sliding folded slips of paper — heavy with human grief and hope — into every crevice of the mortar.

Here were three great rivers of faith — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — converging on the exact same patch of dust.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, breathing the same cool Mediterranean air, looking up at the exact same sky.

And that was when something shifted deep inside me.

Looking at the faces around me, I didn’t see competing theological doctrines. I saw human beings stripped down to their most vulnerable essence. The tears of an elderly Jewish mother touching the stone of the Western Wall looked no different from the tears of a Christian pilgrim kneeling at the Stone of Anointing, nor did they differ from the quiet reverence of a Muslim worshipper bowing on the stone esplanade above.

The grief was identical. The yearning for peace was identical. The ache to be forgiven, to be protected, and to feel connected to something greater than oneself was universal.

Men have fought wars over Jerusalem for millennia. Empires have bled to claim ownership of its stones, building fortress walls and claiming God as their private property. But the city’s real secret — the truth whispered by its alleys — is that the divine cannot be contained in geography, temple walls, or proprietary creeds.

Human institutions invent divisions, dogma, and boundaries. We build fences to tell ourselves who belongs and who does not. But true spirituality is not about who holds the deed to heaven. It is about whether our hearts can hold humility, compassion, and surrender.

Jerusalem showed me that faith is not a matter of winning an argument; it is a posture of the soul.

I left Jerusalem a changed man. I did not lose my reverence for the sacred; rather, my understanding of it expanded beyond the rigid confines of ritual. I realised that trust, kindness, and empathy are the purest forms of worship we can offer. The world often asks us to choose sides, but the stones of Jerusalem taught me to choose humanity.

Years have passed, but a piece of my spirit remains in those narrow alleys. Whenever the world around me grows loud with intolerance and division, I close my eyes and remember that single golden sunset over the Old City. I remember that we are all walking the same ancient road, carrying the same fragile hopes, praying to the same infinite silence.

This story was written for the A Place Called Home writing challenge, hosted by Hooria Akbar and Paulia Dianz.A🧡, exploring the places that shaped our identity.

The Places That Made Me Who I Am — A Writing Challenge

This story is published in “A Place Called Home ” — a warm corner for real voices and honest hearts. Have a story of your own? Share it with us,“Where Your Words Feel Home.”

'A Place Called Home' —  Welcome To Our New Publication

The Places That Made Me Who I Am was originally published in A Place Called Home on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.