Everyone Matters

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

You won’t know it. Not then.
Not when your hand finds a stranger’s coin
beneath the church pew,
or when you stand so an old man can sit—
his knees flickering like leaves
caught in the tremble of monsoon breath.

But something records it.
Not God, perhaps. Not conscience.
Maybe the ledger is a wind
curling back what we once discarded—
a smile to the enemy in the market,
five seconds beside a friend unraveling
into something quieter than grief.

Even silence has entries:
the withheld retort,
the swallowed curse,
the warmth unsaid.
The kindness
that never made it to a Facebook post,
and so remained
pure.

Stop here.
We must honor
what never sought applause.

Still, there are threads.
We are all tangled in them,
golden, thinning, knotted
through the hands of gods or ghosts—
no one knows.

Even the man who sharpens knives
by the river, whistling old hymns
to nobody.
Even the girl who gathers gumamela
with fingers red from a story
no one asked her to tell.
Even the one who leaves
before the word goodbye
blooms fully
in the mouth of the one
she tried to forget.

Everyone matters.
And that is the terror—
that there are no small doors
to disappear through.
That is the grace—
to be seen
by something that does not
forget.