Before Sunset: And Yet, My Heart Belongs to You

Inspired by Jibanananda Das' poem "Dujon"

“Don’t search for me—you haven’t for years—
And I haven’t sought you either—
Yet beneath the same star—
On the far side of the same lighted earth,
We dwell—
The world’s old roads fade with time,
Love slowly disappears,
Even stars must one day die—
Mustn’t they?”
— Jibanananda Das,(Bengali Rhymer)from “ Dujon”)

Jesse and Céline’s lives echo these lines—
Two hearts that once promised to meet again
Six months after that fateful Viennese night.
But fate held back its blessing—
And years unraveled like loose threads from memory’s cloth.
Nothing lasts forever—
Not love, not light, not even stars—
Not even the etched paths of the earth.
Love fades, feelings dissolve.
Time may stretch eternal,
But love isn’t always written in the stars.
Yet memory?
Memory clings—
Haunting the soul, reviving what time seeks to bury.
And so it was for Jesse and Céline—
Oceans apart,
But minds forever wedded to one lost night.

The Atlantic lay vast between them—
But their hearts stood on the same shore,
Beneath the same star.
Yes, they hadn’t seen each other—
But had they truly stopped searching?
No—
They searched, always,
Though time stretched six months into nine long years.

Nine years later, Jesse—now an acclaimed writer—
Tours Paris with his book This Time,
A bestseller drawn from that single night,
A literary map to find Céline again.
And find her, he does—
She walks into the bookstore,
Paris’ dusk holding its breath.
There she stands—
The woman who carved his soul with memory.
She, too, had read his words.
She, too, had remembered.
And once more, time tries to steal her away—
For Jesse has a flight to catch.
But this time, he walks out with her—
No hesitation, only stories to be told as they stroll through Paris.

“And yet, my heart belongs to you.”

In nine years, so much has changed.
Their chemistry, though, rekindles like embers in the wind.
Love isn't all whispers and warmth—
Sometimes, it’s simply the freedom
To speak your soul beside someone who listens.
They share thoughts on life, love, politics,
Strolling past Parisian cafés and shadows of trees—
Words flowing like old rivers reunited.

Céline speaks of that missed promise—
The day she couldn’t come to Vienna—
Her grandmother had died.
Did Jesse go?
He says no.
But when she presses—
He falls silent,
Then confesses:
Yes, he was there.
He waited.
He had kept the promise.
Only time, cruel as ever, kept them apart.

They speak of life since then—
Jesse is married, with a son named Hank,
Bound not by love but by circumstance.
Céline, unmarried, is with a photojournalist,
Her days shaped by activism and solitude.
Yet neither finds joy in the paths they’ve walked.
They open their wounds to each other,
And old magic stirs once more.

"Her eyes held the dark of a hundred centuries…”

Later, Jesse visits Céline’s home—
Finds she sings,
Writes songs—
And one of those melodies holds his name in secret.
At Jesse’s urging, she sings—
A confession in tune—
That though miles have passed,
Her heart never did.
She, too, wished for another night.
Their hearts, though on diverging roads,
Had walked the same distance in silence.

Jibanananda once wrote—
"Sochetona, you are a faraway isle near the evening star;
Beyond the cinnamon groves, silence awaits."
And indeed—
Though life changes, though cities rise and hearts break,
Still,
My heart belongs to you.

The world has turned,
Time has spun its wheel,
But nothing could erase that night—
That love.
Once again, fate brings them together.
Now the question remains:
Will Jesse board his flight back to a life half-lived?
Or will he stay—
With the one his soul never stopped calling?

To find the answer,
One must walk further into the story—
To Before Midnight.

Crafted with tender realism by Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy,
Before Sunset captures a love that defies time—
With performances so raw,
You forget you’re watching fiction.