When I die, I don’t want clouds or trumpets or gates of gold. I don’t want choirs or kingdoms or any of the old promises they painted on stained glass. My dream is simpler, sharper, more infinite.

I want to open my eyes and see her face. Just her. The first light after death will be the glow of her skin, the warmth of her eyes locking onto mine, the recognition that I’ve been searching for my whole life.

Around us there will be nothing—no sky, no ground, no horizon. A paradise emptied of all distractions. A blank eternity stretched wide and silent, but not hollow. That emptiness is for us. It is freedom, a stage for love with no audience, no judgment, no time pressing down.

She will smile, and I’ll know that everything—every shadow I walked through, every fire I carried—was only to get here, to this one unbroken moment. In that emptiness, I will finally feel full.

It won’t matter what came before. Hell, heaven, earth—it will all dissolve. Because I will have her. And in her face, I will see the proof that paradise was never a place, but a person.