When There Was No World

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

When there was no world,
no ridge of a mother’s back to hold you,
no grave to lower your father into,
no kiss to fuck your soul loose—
just breathless nothing,
like the soft place between my thighs before
it knew what it could hold—
only that warm blankness
where time hadn’t bled yet,
a hush so perfect you could hear
your own doubt unforming—

then something stirred.
Not with pride. Not with shame.
With want.

One made himself a form.
Said, I will be human.
A body to feel.
To hurt, to bloom, to break apart
like a wet loaf of bread in a trembling hand.
He did not make himself perfect.
He made himself real.

But others—oh, others flinched
at that raw mirror.
They grew feathers to flee the knowing,
fangs to bite the knowing,
gills to glide through silence.
Some made masks of beauty,
their eyes like god-rooms no one could enter,
their hips born only to be envied.
One made itself into a stamen
just to be fucked by bees.
Another grew a tail to swing
from the shame of wanting.

A flower shaped itself
to look like a monkey.
A monkey curled into a flower.
A bird made itself a woman.
A woman made herself into air
and called it dancing.

Some took the shape of angels,
majestic as guilt,
terrible as a child asking why?
Some wore terror like robes.
Some hid under beauty
so lush you’d mistake it for mercy.

And I—I think I was a fish
trying to sing.
Or a nightingale
learning to drown.
Even now,
something in me remembers
being formless.
How we chose bodies
like cloaks for the story
we wanted to survive.

Not to be right,
not to be whole—
but to be seen.
To live in some shape
imagination had dared
to touch.

That was the first love.
The first lie.
The first truth.