Without Poetry

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

You gave me the name Gorio,
and then you placed me beside a pen—
not of words,
but of pigs.
You made my house a thin plank wall away
from filth,
as if the stink was part of my skin,
as if poverty wasn’t already
its own kind of rot.

You wrote me with cracked heels,
hands like bark,
and a silence that stretched
longer than the days
between pay.
You gave me Boy,
my son,
his nose curling at the air
I breathed,
at the life I chose
so he could one day leave it.

And maybe that’s what hurt the most—
you showed him looking at me
like I was the pig.
Like Gorio was the smell,
the stain,
the shame.

But you forgot, Leoncio—
I was not born in a sty.
I was born with a name,
with laughter once,
with dreams that looked
a lot like his
until I learned
how fast hunger
chews through them.

You made me quiet,
made me swallow his anger
like bile that never leaves the throat.
You never let me scream back.
Not even once.
And yet, I fed him.
Fed those pigs.
Fed the debt that bit my heel
each morning I rose
before the light.

What is a father, Leoncio,
if not a man who gives his dignity
to keep his child’s future
clean?

I am Gorio.
Not a hero.
Not a beast.
Just a man
who learned to love
through work that nobody honors,
through skin that split in silence.
You made them see my dirt.
Now let them see my grace.

Write me again,
Leoncio—
but this time,
let Boy remember
that I loved him
without poetry,
without words—
but with everything
my body
could still give.