Disappearing Connections

There are some nights when sleep no longer feels complete. You wake up suddenly, unsure whether you were dreaming or remembering something your mind never fully let go of.

Last night, I woke up at 3:19 a.m. The digital clock across the room was glowing strangely in the dark, showing 5:57 a.m. For a moment, I wondered if I had slept through the night without realising it. I opened one eye and tried to look through the narrow gap between the curtains to make sense of the sky outside, but everything looked the same shade of darkness.

It had been raining all day and all evening. The weather forecast warned about strong winds and torrential rain continuing into today. The power had gone out earlier in the night, and I realised the clock had reset itself after the outage.

I got out of bed, checked the actual time on my phone, and saw it really was 3:19 a.m.

It was almost time for prayer anyway, so I stayed awake.

After praying, I tried to sleep again, and somewhere between sleep and memory, I saw someone I had not thought about in a long time.

Some people come into your life so briefly that later you begin wondering whether they were ever truly there at all. Yet somehow, they leave behind confusion that lasts much longer than the connection itself.

In the dream, we were standing near a mosque. He was trying to reconnect with me again, repeating his phone number over and over as if it mattered that I remembered it this time. But I had no paper, no pen, not even my phone. I kept trying to memorise the numbers, but they became tangled and mixed together in my mind.

Then he started walking away again.

I remember suddenly telling him, “Wait, I think I still have your email.”

From a distance, he yelled back, “That one doesn’t work anymore.”

Then he disappeared into smoke.

Even in the dream, I remember feeling frustrated, almost helpless, trying to hold on to something that clearly did not want to stay.

When I woke up, I kept wondering why certain people return in dreams after years of silence. Why does the mind reopen doors that life has already closed? Why do some connections feel unfinished, even when they were never meant to last?

Perhaps some questions were never meant to have answers.

Some people come into your life so briefly that later you begin to wonder whether they were ever truly there or just a dream.