The Mirror Before Her

Chapter Four: The Silence After the Storm

Grief doesn’t arrive like thunder.

It comes in the silence after.

After the doctors stop trying.

After the machines go still.

After someone asks you if there’s anyone you want to call, and you realize—there’s no one in the world who can help you now.

I don’t remember leaving the hospital.

I just remember the cold.

It clung to my skin like a second layer, followed me into cabs, onto sidewalks, into my apartment. I turned off my phone. Let it die with the unanswered texts. The flowers people sent wilted before I could even open the cards.

There was no funeral I could attend. No closure to touch. Her parents buried her back in Davao. I sent them a message—I don’t remember what it said—and never heard back.

And honestly, I didn’t blame them.

We weren’t married yet.

We weren’t even together for long.

To most people, I was just the man she almost married.

But she was more than that to me.

She was the first person I let close enough to see the haunted parts of me. The cracks. The softness underneath the silence. She never asked me to be more than I was. And still—I wanted to be.

For her.

With her.

And maybe that was the cruelest part of it all.

She died believing I loved her.

But the truth was—

I loved what I thought she was.

I loved the idea of her.

The dream she resembled.

And now, the woman I confused for my salvation was gone… and all I had left was the wreckage of that mistake.

⸻

I found her letter a week after the accident. Folded neatly inside the jacket I was supposed to wear on our wedding day.

It wasn’t long.

Just a few lines scribbled in her warm, looping handwriting:

“If you’re reading this, it means I’m already standing at the altar or something went wrong. Either way—

I love you.

I want you to know that.

Even if the dream changes.

Even if we never make it to forever.”

Even if we never make it to forever.

I reread that line over and over until the paper tore from how tightly I gripped it.

She had always known. On some level, maybe she knew I wasn’t all in.

Maybe that’s why the universe took her before I could hurt her more.

I didn’t cry.

Not then.

Not even when I sat on the floor of our half-furnished apartment, the one we picked together, her laughter still echoing in the corners of it.

I just stayed there. Frozen. Hollow.

Until one night, weeks later—

I dreamt of the woman in white again.

She didn’t look angry this time.

Just… sad.

And I understood.

She wasn’t grieving Selene.

She was grieving me.

The version of me that never made it in time.