The Geography of Absence

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

At the gym-turned-shelter, they handed us
lugaw in translucent cups, lukewarm—
no salt, no memory—
and said: this will do.

A girl, small as regret,
drew nipa huts with no ladder, no door.
She shaded the roof like dusk she could not
climb. The crayon broke.
She kept going.

They say forgetting is a kind of living.
But my body—
it keeps the sound of the river darkening,
of the radio before its throat closed.
I remember Lola, brushing mud
as if it were dust that could be reasoned with.

When I wait for rice, for soap, for names
to be called, I don’t ask for repair.
I only want someone to sit beside me—
soles firm against concrete,
hands still fragrant with tinapa,
breathing beside me
until the panic loosens from the air.

One afternoon, in the mirror of a tricycle,
I caught my own face—
a territory unmarked,
a barangay no longer claimed.
It did not speak.
It did not need to.

The volunteer, young,
wearing someone else’s patience,
asks if I sleep.
I say yes—
but only on borrowed mats,
where the roof hangs on questions,
where silence builds its home.

She writes this down.
Her pen travels the way a jeep
knows the corners of loss
even when the roads are gone.

Still, I return.
With plastic bags of wet clothes,
with the smell of soot still tucked in my shirt.
I carry floodlines
the way others carry rosaries.
Because once,
a priest told me hope
is the opposite of drowning.

And I believed him—
the way children wait
for the sound of slippers
on concrete,
for a door swinging open
with steam rising from the sinigang.

Maybe they do return.
Maybe we all are walking—
feet softened by mud,
names heavy in our mouths—
guided not by maps,
but by the scent of burnt rice,
and the warmth that insists
on rising, even
from ash.