A Future Meant to Be Moved

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

after a whisper misheard as prophecy

God, if He speaks of
the future, does so
as if peeling a fruit
that bruises at the touch. Not
often, and never for beauty.

Only
when the days ahead
arrive too early—smelling of rust,
or milk gone sour in the heat—
does He part the threadbare
veil and say: Look.

Not this will happen,
but this is what waits
if you do nothing—
if you let your body follow
its shadow too long.

The vision is a crow
on a clothesline. Black
thread on blue sky.
It perches, not to scare,
but to ask: How long
before you change the ending?

The future is
not marble. It is
water in a cracked glass.
Spillable. Remade
with the tilt of a hand.

So listen carefully.
The whisper you thought was
a warning may have been
an invitation. The kind
that arrives folded
in the corners of sleep,
unsigned, but waiting
for your name.