The Box

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The box has stiff sides—
like the cardboard used in appliance boxes,
its corners worn from moving house too often.
Inside, it is dark,
too dark to see the postcard
from your cousin in Davao,
or the paper rose your mother folded
from a sachet of laundry powder.
It smells faintly of mildew—
the kind that clings to damp hymnals
stored in the chapel’s forgotten cabinet.
And birthdays.
Not yours. The ones you pretended
weren’t happening.
The box holds no light.
It eats sound like thick curtains
in your aunt’s spare bedroom.
But yes,
your imagination is bright—
a kite cobbled together
from your old math notebook,
its margins ripped clean,
its spine stitched with
thread pilfered from Lola’s sewing kit,
the one with a lid shaped like a tomato
and a rusted pair of scissors
you weren’t allowed to touch.
The kite flickers above the rice field
where the scarecrow outlasted
all the children.
It strains against the wind,
a long string wrapped around
your ink-smudged fingers.
Your palm, still damp
with the heat of hours spent alone,
tightens—
you hold the string
like you once held
your brother’s last smile,
like a secret
you have yet to speak aloud.
You flip through old report cards
and laminated certificates
as if they were magazines
left on a barbershop bench—
pages creased,
smelling faintly of bay rum and floor wax.
The images—
bright, falsely confident—
never quite matching the person
you remember.
Each crease,
each forgotten chasm,
a folder of bruised thoughts
and rain-stamped recollections:
your mother’s voice,
cracked open during typhoon season,
your father’s coat,
still damp
after every job interview
that led nowhere.
The garden
you planted in your throat
blooms unevenly—
half jasmine,
half rust.
Each poem
smelling of sidewalk rain
and the faint iron of a bitten tongue.
You speak—
always—
in coffee shops with chipped tables,
as if syntax could save you,
as if every sentence
were an exorcism.
You quote lines taped
to the back of your bedroom door:
Nietzsche beside a fortune cookie,
Emily Dickinson next to
“Buy eggs.”
But by morning,
they curl like old receipts.
You guess at meanings
in the smallest of things:
the way your father paused mid-sentence
that night he forgot your birthday,
the weight of coins in your pocket
after trading your last allowance
for a pirated copy
of Wuthering Heights.
Still, you offer them like communion—
a crumb of metaphor,
a drop of dusk
placed gently on the tongue
of someone who still believes
you mean every word.
You think you’re telling a story—
made of moths and secondhand books,
each sentence
fluttering toward the same lamp
until they burn themselves holy.
You pose—
shoulders stiff,
mouth closed like a prayer
folded wrong.
The mirror sees past
your imitation of divinity—
sees the borrowed diction,
the ghost of someone
trying to mean more than they say.
You speak in borrowed truths—
as if all the world’s wisdom
were etched on index cards
in gold ink,
as if truth never bled
through cheap paper.
Your tongue cuts quick—
like the scissors left
on the dining table
after Lola made curtains
from your mother’s old uniform.
They glint beside the pan de sal—
sharp enough
to slice both bread
and conversation.
Your words fall
like monsoon rain
on galvanized iron.
The sound carries—
even after silence
has tried
to erase it.
Outside,
the box is wrapped
in a glossy pink gift wrapper
from SM Department Store—
creased at the edges,
a leftover from your sister’s debut.
The ribbon, roseate,
folded like the final sentence
in a love letter
whose ends were burned
so no one could reread it.
Beside it:
a Galaxy Note 4, cracked like your map
to a future you didn’t pursue.
Your bag,
soft from use,
slumps with receipts and regrets.
Later,
the birthday party begins.
Paper hats tilt
like broken halos.
The cake is lit.
Someone sings.
No one notices
you are crying.