Editor’s Note: This story is a piece of fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Harry. The way his greyish-blue eyes hold mine, the way his voice softens the first ‘a’ around my name, pronouncing it differently from anyone I’ve ever known — it makes me like my name a bit more. He’s always there, lingering at the edges of my mind, a constant presence I can’t shake — and don’t want to. 

I hold his hand and pull his presence beside me, as I take steps towards Memorial Church. The colorful mosaics appear in perfect symmetry across us, illuminated amongst the darkness, like the moon on a clear midnight sky, with its elegance that never ceases to leave me in awe.

We grew up very differently, in vastly different worlds. He was the child of expats and lived all around Europe, the Middle East and America. Unlike him, I’ve always lived in the same neighborhood in Istanbul. The two of us, shaped by vastly different worlds, now share the same campus pathways. It’s strange to think how far we’ve both come, both literally and figuratively, to find ourselves here. 

Darkness surrounds us as we lay on the ground by the church and stare at the stars. Harry starts playing French rap songs from his phone. I queue a Turkish singer. We listen, with lyrics that I understand completely, lyrics about impossible love and the pain of it all in Turkish; lyrics that Harry has no clue about — neither in language nor in sentiment.

Earlier, we were talking about our childhoods. He tells me about how they used to make them read poems in his British school. I try to imagine him as a little kid on a desk with a school uniform. I enter into his childhood world, time traveling to a time we hadn’t known of each other’s existence. 

Harry visited Istanbul, my city, when he was a kid. He wondered if we could have crossed paths back then. It’s a secret we will never uncover.

I wonder how many students have laid down somewhere outside on this campus and looked to the stars like us. I feel tiny under the sky and under the continuation of time. 

“You are getting all so melancholic again,” he said, noticing the sad aura of my face. 

I share these soft anxieties in my mind, and we start talking about eternity. He finds my accent while I say ‘eternity’ amusing. “You always emphasize the t’s.” He says it like I say it.

I tell him all about the movie “Vertigo,” and how meaningful of a movie it is, and he listens until I’m done.

“Your head is always in the clouds,” he tells me. “It’s like you are present next to me physically, but your mind is elsewhere, floating.” He says this observation about me in a loving way.

I stare up at the sky again. These constellations have always been here and will be, but the people whose eyes perceive these heavenly celestial shapes are changing: finding shared meaning across vast differences, even when the rest of the world feels impossibly far away. 

The feelings I have for this boy next to me make me feel more alive than I have ever been, but even this feeling can go away any second, like a beautiful glass vase that fell and broke into a million pieces that can never be traced back again. With one moment, with time passing, things are changing, and there is no going back.

Right now, though, in this fleeting moment, I feel a happiness so deep it hurts. I already know I’ll spend weeks trying to recreate this moment in my mind, clinging to every detail: the sunlight spilling over the church, the cross at the top glinting faintly, his crooked smile curling up on the right side of his lips.

I don’t want this meaningful moment of mine to get erased under all the steps that are taken on the main quad, amidst all the ideas and discoveries that come to life at Stanford. 

I know I can’t hold on to it. But for now, I try.