What Everybody Gets

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

You get what everybody gets.
You get a lifetime—
not a palace,
not even a plot
you can stand on
without remembering
it will give way.

A lifetime is
a cup chipped
at the rim,
your father's old
umbrella turned inside out
in the rain.

It is the softness
of laundry still warm
from the line,
and the sharp
taste of mango skin
bitten too close
to the seed.

You walk through it
barefoot, mostly,
on gravel roads,
stepping over
things you once
called dreams.

No maps,
only the memory
of your mother humming
while shelling beans,
the sound of a jeep
pulling away
before you
could say—wait.

And if you are lucky,
you learn
the trick:
that time does not
ask to be filled
with brilliance—
only attention.

That it is enough
to have held
a face
in your hands
long enough
to memorize its
vanishing.

That even a cracked
porcelain bowl
can hold
the sky—
if you look
the right way.