Si: Rose At Si Alma

Rose closed her eyes. A single tear fell. “And I’ll learn to burn a little. Just enough to live.”

One afternoon, Alma found Rose sitting on the bathroom floor, staring at a pair of scissors.

They were sisters. Whole. Burning and blooming at last.

Alma’s eyes glistened. For the first time, she saw it: Rose wasn’t just calm. She was frozen. And Alma wasn’t just passionate. She was ash-blind, leaving scorch marks on everyone who loved her. SI ROSE AT SI ALMA

“I’ll learn to be a garden,” Alma said quietly. “Not a wildfire.”

Si Rose and Si Alma were sisters, but the town of San Cielo swore they were born from different seasons.

Rose, washing a vase in the sink, didn’t turn around. “You can’t save everyone by breaking yourself.” Rose closed her eyes

Rose was the eldest. She was a still pond in the middle of a library—soft, patient, and folded into herself. She worked at the town’s only flower shop, arranging peonies and baby’s breath with the kind of reverence other people saved for prayer. Her voice was a whisper. Her world was small: the shop, her garden, the kitchen window where she watched the rain.

“Rose?” Alma’s voice dropped to a whisper she rarely used. “What are you doing?”

“You’re burning,” Rose replied. “And I’m tired of being the water.” Just enough to live

“And you can’t save anyone by staying silent.”

It was the first crack. Not loud. Just a hairline fracture in the quiet.

For years, that was enough. Rose rooted Alma when she burned too bright. Alma set fire to Rose when she grew too still.

Over the next weeks, Alma grew wilder—late nights, louder music, a new tattoo of a phoenix on her forearm. Rose grew quieter—canceled dinner plans, stopped watering the jasmine by the door, let the shop’s shutters stay half-closed.

Si Rose ay hindi na ugat lamang. Si Alma ay hindi na apoy lamang.