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The house was silent.
Not the peaceful kind of silence, it wasn't the kind that came after laughter, after music, after love, but the hollow sort. The kind that settled in bones and walls like dust. The kind that lingered long after the echoes had faded.
No one called her name. No footsteps from the hallway. No faint shuffle of paper from the study, no smell of coffee filling the air.
Just silence.
Yalda sat on the edge of the bed they’d once shared. The sheets still held the ghost of his scent. She hadn’t changed them. Couldn’t. She wore one of his shirts, it hung off her like it had when she first slipped it on during one of those quiet mornings, only now it felt heavier, like it carried weight it hadn’t before. She pressed her face into the collar, trying to breathe him in. But even that was fading.
She closed her eyes.
The ache inside her chest pulsed like a second heartbeat, it was slow, constant, dull. A part of her wanted to scream, to rip the silence apart, to throw something just to feel it shatter.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she lay back against the pillows, stretching across the spot where he used to sleep. Her hand reached for the edge of the bed like she might find him there, like maybe he had just gone to get tea, like maybe he’d come back.
He didn’t.
So she began to speak to him, not out loud, never out loud. Just inside. Where he still lived.
"You’d tell me to stop crying," she thought as her cheek turned wet again. "You’d touch my chin, lift my face, tell me I’m too beautiful to be this sad."
She closed her eyes tighter.
She hadn’t eaten since the day before yesterday, and even then it had been just a few bites of bread. Nothing tasted like anything anymore.
"You’d scold me for skipping meals," she continued in her head. "Then you’d make me eat, hug me, and swear you would fix everything."
Flashbacks trickled in like droplets against glass.
The first he made her coffee. The first time she cooked for him, the sound of his laughter filling the kitchen as she teased him. The feel of his heartbeat under her ear when they lay on the couch together. Strong, steady. Hers.
The way he used to hum absentmindedly when she'd hummed for so long and he subconsciously picked up the tone. Each memory carved into her a little deeper.
The hours blurred. The sun moved, but she didn’t. When it got dark, she lit a candle, not because she needed the light, but because he always said it made the house feel warm.
Eventually, she rose. Moved through the rooms like a shadow.
In the study, she ran her hands over the shelves. His pen still sat on the desk. There was an unfinised book there too, probably one he'd been reading before he became too weak to carry on.
She picked it up with her hands trembling, she sat.
Then she began sorting. One drawer at a time. One item at a time.
His journals were stacked in careful rows, decades of thoughts and observations, of philosophies and raw confessions. She opened one at random. Her name was there. Scattered through pages in his scrawl.
She had never thought he journaled at all.
'I thought I knew grief. I thought I didn't know love. Then she walked into my life and undid everything I believed.'
'Yalda looks at me like I matter. Like I’m still worth something. Some days, I think that’s the only reason I’m still here.'
Her breath caught.
She kept reading. Finding little corners of herself in his words. She was inked into his world. She saw herself from his point of view and it was the most beautiful perspective of her she could ever perceive.
Her hands shook. She let the papers fall onto the desk as tears surged forward again, deep, gasping sobs that folded her in half.
How do you mourn someone who gave you everything? How do you keep breathing when the person who taught you how to love is no longer in the world?
She didn’t have the answers.
But somewhere between the pages of his journals and the feel of his sweater still draped over the chair, a truth began to whisper itself into her mind.
He loved her. Entirely. Irrevocably. Unconditionally. He had built a world around her while he could. And now it was hers to keep standing in.
Even if she didn’t know how. Even if it hurt to move.
She stepped to the window and looked out. The sky was heavy with clouds, light pressing through the overcast veil. The world outside looked unchanged, cars still passed, birds still sang, the trees still danced lightly in the breeze.
It felt wrong. The world should’ve stopped, she thought. Everything should’ve gone still when he left.
But it hadn’t. And maybe that was the cruelest part. Because life kept moving. Even when her world had fallen off its axis. Even when her hands still trembled with grief.
She leaned her forehead against the glass. Then a knock came. Soft. Respectful. Timed with the storm in her chest.
Her heart stalled.
She didn’t need to ask who it was. The time had come for the funeral.
For a moment, she didn’t move, she let the sound echo once more, just once, and then she turned. She wiped her face. Straightened his shirt on her body. And walked toward the door.
Toward goodbye. Toward whatever came after.
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