Where Memory Meets the Breeze

 a poem by Roger B. Rueda

There is a rustle in the curtains,
a moth caught in its folds, its wings
like thin paper crumpling in the air.
The room smells faintly of lavender,
the way your mother’s hands did
when she pressed them to your forehead
as you drifted into the heat of fever.
Memory is like this, I think,
a whisper of talc and citrus—
something you cannot see
until it leans close enough to breathe on you.

I step outside. The sky is
a dull sheet of zinc stretched thin,
the edges frayed where clouds gnaw at its corners.
The acacia, gnarled and weary, bends
as if carrying decades of wind.
A dog barks at a figure
hidden in the glass reflection of a jeepney—
its voice fractures into the city’s static:
the sputter of tricycles, the hiss of burning tires,
and the faint murmur of someone selling bread.

Once, in the middle of the storm,
we pressed our hands together
on the thin wooden door of a chapel.
Your fingers, damp with the rain,
left faint trails of salt
on my wrist, and I knew then
that this was the shape of holding on—
like wind cupping fire.
Your laugh cracked the air,
a ricochet between the tin roofs,
as the storm swirled into itself
and spat us back into silence.

But beauty is a fickle thing.
It doesn’t linger;
it hangs in the cold glint of sunlight
that breaks through the dusty capiz windows—
a promise that dissolves
when the light shifts,
when the day folds into shadow.
To love is to know this erosion:
the slow drip of water against stone,
the way a mango ripens to sweetness,
only to drop, bruised, into waiting dirt.

Now, I watch the wind again,
pulling at the laundry lines,
making the white shirts billow
like restless ghosts.
What do they know of permanence?
What do I?
We are all temporary shapes—
faces reflected in a rain puddle,
the ripple that follows a stone’s descent.

Yet there are moments—
a boy’s laughter bursting
from the window of a passing jeep,
or the smell of lechon lingering
long after the coals have gone cold—
when despair feels like a lie.
In those moments, I wonder
if meaning hides in the smallest things:
the crackle of garlic in oil,
the sharp sting of calamansi on the tongue,
the fleeting clarity of a dragonfly’s wings.

So I stand here,
watching the world exhale
its chaos into the street,
the brittle laughter of vendors,
the hiss of rain on hot concrete.
I hold the fragile joy of being,
even as I know
the wind will one day take it—
its hands steady,
its touch sure.

The Weight of Rain on Banana Leaves

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

The poets are the capturers of truths

so small they slip unnoticed—
the silver arc of a teaspoon catching light,
the gentle exhale of a door closing.
They are the weavers of fleeting moments:
the clink of ice against a glass,
the frayed hem of a dress
dragging across linoleum.
They filter the world through
a sieve fine enough to hold
only the essence of what matters.

The poets carve meaning
from what others discard.
They sift through the small, the quiet,
the almost invisible:
a strand of hair caught on a collar,
the bruised edges of a peach
left too long on the counter,
the way rain lingers on glass
before surrendering to gravity.

Every small act passes through them—
the flick of a wrist stirring tea,
the lilt of a voice saying goodbye,
the ache in a pause
that stretches just too long.
They stitch these fragments into lines
that glimmer,
their words an invitation
to see what has always been there:
the extraordinary folded
into the ordinary.

Their wisdom pools
in the pages of books,
spines bowed on dusty shelves.
The wells are deep,
but people no longer stoop
to drink.

These days, they skim the surface of life,
scrolling past its subtleties,
rushing through its stillness.
They forget to pause—
to notice how the scent of coffee
pulls morning into focus,
how the creak of a swing
can pull time backward,
how light shifts at dusk,
a fleeting blessing
on the face of the day.

They forget to wonder,
to connect the poetry of their lives
to the poetry in words.
They miss the threads that tether them:
the rustle of leaves caught in autumn’s sigh,
the sticky sweetness of mango
clinging to fingertips,
the ache of a love song heard alone.

To read a poem is to sip
from the essence of life itself—
to touch what endures,
what waits quietly for us to return.
But in the rush of days,
few stop to taste this sweetness.
Fewer still allow it
to guide them back to themselves,
to where love and gratitude
are waiting,
fragile as spider silk,
but strong enough to hold us.

Yet the poets persist.
They write for the ones
who will remember—
the ones who will one day
sit still long enough
to feel.

They know that the little things matter:
the nap of velvet on a chair,
the half-moon imprint of a fingernail
pressed into a palm,
the way warm air
smells before a storm.

These are the things
that strengthen us—
the unnoticed, the unspoken,
the fibers of a lattice
woven so tightly
we barely see it.

The poets see it.
They always have.
They write for a world
too hurried to notice,
hoping their words
will catch someone mid-step,
mid-thought, mid-breath,
and remind them:

The little things are everything.

 

Peeling Back the Silence

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

The first time she combed my hair,
I was six. Her hands were sure,
parting my hair into straight rivers,
her fingers slicing the waves,
steady as a machete through banana leaves.
She braided tight, pulling the strands
into patterns only she could weave,
as if binding something unseen,
something secret,
into the braids.
“You’ll thank me when you’re older,”
she said, her voice like a lock snapping shut.
In the kitchen, the smell of frying bananas
spun in the air, sticky-sweet,
her hairpins clinking between her teeth.
I believed her then, her care sharp as sunlight
through the slats of a nipa roof.

The last time she combed my hair,
I was sixteen. Her movements were slower,
as though the years had weighed
on her wrists, but the comb still tugged
with the same tension.
Her silence hung like damp laundry,
each fold holding its disapproval.
“Don’t cut it too short,” she muttered,
her voice brittle, the words falling
as if each weighed too much.
“It doesn’t suit you. And no one likes
a boy who doesn’t look proper.”

She didn’t know—or maybe she did—
that I wasn’t waiting for anyone to like me.
I never told her who I was,
but her words hunted me,
unseen arrows through the undergrowth.
“One of those boys,” she called me once,
her tone filled with ash,
like a fire smoldering in her throat.
“What kind of life is that? Who will
understand you?” Her words struck
harder than the silence that followed,
both lingering,
both heavier than her hands.

Still, I think of those hands,
how they worked through my hair
like gardeners taming vines,
their firmness hiding
a kind of tenderness.
These were the hands that braided me tight
enough to last a school day.
The same hands that wiped my tears,
cool and certain,
when I came home bruised and ashamed.
“You’re tougher than this,” she whispered then,
and her words stayed,
iron-strong, unbending.
She carried contradictions
as easily as she carried baskets of fruit,
balanced and effortless,
a strength I never understood.

Now, I see those hands in the kitchen,
peeling bananas with practiced ease,
the skins falling in soft curls
on the cutting board.
The fruit, bruised in places,
still sweet, still good.
She sliced them into pieces,
the blade moving with the rhythm of habit,
and the oil hissed on the stove
as golden edges crisped.
I wonder if, in those quiet hours,
she doubted herself,
if her judgments tasted bitter
in her own mouth.
Did her words echo back to her
in the silence of the phone line?
Did the shadows in her kitchen
whisper the things
she couldn’t bring herself to say?

To understand her
is to understand myself.
Her judgments cling to me still,
like the caramel scent of bananas
cooked too long,
familiar and inescapable.
She was the tug of the comb
and the hush of her hands after.
For every sharp remark,
there was a plate of fried bananas
pushed toward me,
still warm,
her fingers brushing mine
as if saying more than words could.

I think of her often,
dissecting her the way you would
an eye.
The iris, deep and dark,
reflecting both her fears
and her tenderness.
The cornea, thin as glass,
sometimes clouded
but clear enough to see
when she wanted to.
The lens, a secret vault,
holding everything she’d seen,
but never spoken aloud.
Each part of her holds a truth
I’m still untangling.

I don’t know if forgiveness
is something I owe her—or myself.
But I know she was never just one thing,
and neither am I.
She is the comb that hurt
and the hands that healed.
She is the judgment
and the quiet care.
And in peeling back her contradictions,
I am peeling back my own.

She used to say bananas,
when ripened just right,
taste sweetest where they bruise.
I think of that now,
as I sift through her legacy.
The core remains—soft,
imperfect—
but it glimmers faintly.
Perhaps it always will.

 

The Fragile Geometry of Light

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

Teaching is meant
to be an act of service,
a bridge of bamboo and rope,
knotted with care,
its planks bending
but never breaking
under the weight
of footsteps.

Below, the ground blooms green,
fertile with ignorance,
a kind that craves tending.
Each plank is shaped
from what we know,
the knots pulled taut
by the desire to know more.
But even bamboo cracks,
even rope frays,
when the burden becomes denial.

Truth, too, should be alive—
not the dead weight of coral,
pale and brittle,
but the supple shift of river water,
its surface dappled with sunlight,
its depths dark and unknowable.
Truth is both clarity and shadow,
the possibility of drowning
matched only by the thrill of discovery.

Yet in some classrooms,
truth is stifled,
choked like a sapling
reaching for sunlight
through a lattice of undergrowth.
Its roots tangle,
not in ignorance,
but in the heavy vines of pride.

There are teachers,
hardened by time but untested by change,
their years folded tightly around them
like woven palm fronds,
their rustling mistaken for wisdom.
They wear their age like armor—
not protection, but weight.

They do not exchange ideas;
they drop them carelessly,
like overripe fruit bruised by the fall,
the sweetness turned sour.
Their lessons are tough-skinned, bitter,
the kind you chew on but cannot swallow.

To challenge them
is to summon the storm,
to send a single gust
that unravels their fragile canopy,
a shelter that was never strong enough
to weather truth.

It is not the mistake
that enrages them—
it is the sound of it breaking.
The loud, raw splintering of certainty
as truth presses upward,
like the relentless root
of a mangrove breaking the mud’s skin.

When a young teacher,
or a student with hands calloused
by the work of asking,
presses a finger
to the hollow coconuts of their certainty,
they are not thanked.
“You don’t know enough
to correct me,” they say,
their words as sharp
as machetes hacking through underbrush.
Or worse,
their voices roll in thick,
heavy with ceremony:
“Respect your elders.”

But what is respect
if it demands silence?
What is wisdom
if it refuses the rain?
If it cannot shed its withered leaves
and sprout anew,
what good is it?

They forget
that teaching is not
about permanence,
but the courage to let words fall—
to let them scatter like ash
on fertile ground,
where truth might take root.

Instead,
they cling to their mistakes
like fishermen gripping
nets worn thin by years of use,
the holes gaping,
their catch already lost.
They insist it is enough—
because they said so.

The classroom becomes a battlefield,
the chalkboard a shield of bark,
the desk a stump,
its rings of age carved deep.
Young teachers,
still green in voice
but golden with hope,
carry the warmth of the sun
in their words.
But even their light is turned away,
mistaken for fire—
destructive, not illuminating.

And the students?
They should grow like vines,
reaching, stretching,
their tendrils tasting the air,
climbing toward treetops.
But they are told to coil inward,
to root themselves in shadows,
their curiosity twisted tight
and buried in the loam of obedience.

The pursuit of truth
is trampled like seedlings
under careless feet.
And in its place,
a quiet rot spreads—
resentment,
its spores feeding
on the damp soil of unspoken anger.

It could be different.

They could see the cracks
for what they are:
openings.
They could look at the light
pouring through
and say,
“Thank you for showing me
what I had not seen.
Let us learn together.”

But too often,
they do not.

And so the young teacher,
the questioning student,
walks away,
carrying the weight
of rejection,
their footprints fading
into the sand of an empty shore.

Not because they were wrong—
but because they were right.
And being right,
in the wrong place,
is unforgivable.

Still, they persist.

They teach,
their words scattering like seeds
from a coconut husk,
floating across the tide,
seeking land to grow.

They endure,
knowing that truth,
like water,
will wear down the sharpest rocks,
will seep through the smallest cracks.

Teaching is not about
being untouchable,
immaculate,
immune.
It is about standing bare,
under rain and sun alike,
allowing the water
to wash away what no longer serves,
letting light
pull new life from the soil.

The best teachers know this.
The rest, perhaps,
will learn it too—
if they dare to unlace
their roots,
to open their palms
to the tide
and let truth flow in.

 

How the House Remembers

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

The house wore its silence thick—
a woolen cloak after rain,
settling into the threads of curtains,
seeping through the slats of shutters.

He stood in the living room.
Her chair, angled toward the window,
still bore the weight of her absence:
an imprint faint as the memory
of hands folding into prayer.

The dogs' corner smelled
of fur and sleep—
a shadow of warmth where
their blankets lay.
He traced the indentation
of paws on the wooden floor,
the spaces they left behind
too vast to fill.

The cats once prowled these walls,
their tails curling around table legs.
Now the air hung still—
a whisker, caught in sunlight,
a ghost of movement that vanished
before he could reach it.

Loss sat with him,
its weight pressing into
his ribcage, its breath
a draft that never ceased.

He touched the walls,
as if pressing his palms
against a mirror:
what once reflected him,
now, only absence.

The echoes came
in fragments:
the faint lavender
of her lotion in the bathroom,
a chew toy hidden under the couch—
its rubber worn to threadbare teeth.
Even the sun refused permanence,
its rays slanting through the window
like a visitation, brief and fading.

Grief worked its way into the house’s marrow,
pushing against the rafters,
seeping through the pipes.
He tried to live inside it.

They said:
move forward.
They said:
grief softens,
folds into the body,
becomes less a stone
and more a ripple.

But forward meant
leaving them behind:
the recipe book inked
with her steady hand;
his oldest dog’s nose
pressed against his knee;
the scratch of claws
on his bedroom door—
a chorus calling him back
to the life he lost.

He picked up their remains.
He set the leashes on a shelf.
Folded their absence
into something he could carry—
a museum built
of unspoken things.

At night,
he swore he saw them:
her humming in the rocking chair,
the dogs chasing stars
across the yard,
the cats stalking shadows
under the moon.

He knew these visions
weren’t real,
but the flicker of them—
a lit match against his chest—
was enough.

Grief, it seemed,
was both severance
and tethering:
one hand letting go,
the other gripping tight
to the edges of memory.

In the end,
he lived between the two:
the recipe book closed,
but kept;
the photo of the dogs
fading on the fridge;
the cat’s paw print
on his desk,
still sharp enough to cut.

He let grief settle,
its bones becoming part of his own.
And in that place,
where absence met permanence,
he found something—
a pulse, faint but steady,
a love that lived
even in the silence.

 

Fissure

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

There is a peculiar ache in being human—
like the pull of an uneven thread in a wool sweater,
the way it catches and scratches,
a tension between the open hands of strangers
and the locked chest of your own secrets.
It is the silence of a parked car after a long drive,
engine ticking as it cools,
your thoughts louder than the night outside.

We walk through life carrying our burdens—
a canvas tote sagging with bruised apples,
receipts stuffed between pages of a novel,
forgotten but still there.
Each of us, silent keepers of truths
wrapped like glass figurines in tissue,
hidden in the attic of the heart,
too fragile or too sharp to hold for long.

Some truths are small—
the sting of a word left hanging in the air,
like smoke curling from a burnt-out match;
the ache of an unopened invitation,
the shame of a borrowed book never returned.
Others stretch wide, shadows lengthening at dusk—
a father’s slow retreat into memory,
a lover’s suitcase at the door,
a hunger unnamed but familiar,
its edges sharp as a broken shell.

We press these burdens
tight against the walls of our hearts,
like postcards pinned to corkboards,
their corners curling from the weight of time,
as if the weight itself might define us,
might make us whole.

But the weight does not make us whole.
It bends our spines like young bamboo,
pulls at the seams of our smiles.
We become performers on the world’s smallest stage,
the tilt of a laugh, the practiced nod,
each gesture choreographed to say,
“Look, I am fine.”
Even as we retreat into the quiet corridors
of ourselves, the doors closing softly behind.

And yet, in rare moments—
like the first rainfall after a dry spell—
when we let the mask slip,
when we show the raw, cracked skin beneath,
something extraordinary happens:
connection blooms.
A stranger’s hand brushes yours,
a friend holds your gaze just a second too long,
and the weight shifts,
the boundary between you and the world dissolving,
like sugar in tea.

Still, the duality remains.
For every open door, there is a shuttered window.
We bury pain like heirlooms beneath floorboards,
clutching our secrets as though they were pearls
instead of stones.
Why do we hold so tightly to what hurts us most?
Perhaps it is fear—
of someone turning away at the sight of our scars.
Or the strange comfort of wounds
that fit us like an old coat,
frayed at the cuffs but familiar.

To live fully is to wrestle this duality,
to sit with the ghosts in our empty chairs
and ask them their names.
It is to trace the outline of our hungers—
for the touch of a hand across a table,
for the weightlessness of forgiveness,
for freedom from the shadows of old doors.
This reckoning is no gentle thing;
it is a garden spade cutting through rocky soil,
a lantern held to the face of the mirror.
But it is also grace,
the kind that comes with the first light of dawn,
when the world stretches awake.

For in naming our hungers, we let light in.
In saying, “This is my truth,”
we place our burdens gently into another’s hands,
trusting they will carry them without breaking.
We discover that pain, like bread,
can be shared, torn into smaller pieces,
its weight lighter in the offering.
And in the quiet reciprocity of being seen—
the nod that says, “I know,”
the touch that says, “I am here”—
we find a kind of healing.

To those who carry unseen burdens,
know this: the ache you feel is real,
but so is the possibility of release.
It begins with the courage to speak,
to uncurl your hands and let the stones fall.
And to those who witness another’s pain:
your presence can be the balm,
your listening the thread that stitches
a broken seam.

We are all, in some way,
hungry for a place at the table,
for the sound of our name spoken kindly.
The duality of connection and isolation
is not a battle but a balance—
the tide’s ebb and flow, the moon’s shadowed face.
In solitude, we learn to know ourselves;
in connection, we learn to be whole.
Together, we can scatter seeds of healing,
lighten the load, and weave a world
where burdens are shared,
where no truth is carried in silence.