GONE BY DAWN

We spent every quiet hour together-sharing secrets beneath the gnarled branches of old mango trees, trading half-eaten pandesal on classroom steps, walking home slow even when the sun had already dipped low. We promised we'd face every tomorrow side by side: that we'd finish high school together, pick the same college courses if we could, rent a tiny apartment with a balcony where we could watch storms roll in over Cebu, and grow old without ever letting distance or time pull us apart. Those words felt as solid as the stone walls of our school, as bright as the streetlamps that lit our way home.

But when the sky turned pale gray and the first soft light touched the rooftops of Mandaue, you left without a single word. No knock at my door, no note slipped under my gate, no text to say goodbye or explain why. You took all our plans, all our quiet hopes, all the little pieces of myself I'd given you-and carried them away before the world even woke up.

Now only your shadow remains: faint echoes of your laugh in places we used to sit, the indent of your shoulder on the old bench by the covered court, the frayed red string you tied around my wrist that I still haven't taken off. Beside me stretches an empty space-where you were supposed to stand when we got our diplomas, where you were supposed to hold my hand through hard days, where you were supposed to be through every single tomorrow we ever dreamed of. The space never fills, never fades, never stops reminding me: you were my first promise, and you became my first goodbye-gone by dawn, leaving nothing but what could have been.