In the Quiet After

 a poem by Roger B. Rueda

The memory of the skin lingers,

in the quiet corners of my mind,
where once their hands pressed like bread dough,
soft yet firm, shaping me into something more.
I remember the brush of their fingers,
a fleeting gesture—like wind touching the surface of water,
but leaving ripples that still tremble.
Each touch was a secret,
shared only in the space between breath,
a whispered promise, held close as if the world might forget.

What love is, I tasted then,
in the salt of their palms, the warmth of their wrists
as they reached to lift me, steady and strong.
It was the way they wrapped around me
like the arms of a tree, holding me against the storm,
sheltering me in the quiet bend of their embrace.
I savored happiness as a fruit
that ripened only in the darkness of togetherness—
its sweetness thick, like honey on the tongue.
But it was more than that,
it was the feeling that love could stretch time,
could fold it back on itself,
till every moment was both here and gone.

Now, as I sit alone, the echo of those touches
seems distant, like a photograph fading in the sun,
the edges curling with the weight of time.
I thirst for their hands, their warmth,
a thirst that pulls like a tide,
yet there is no water left to drink.
Still, I surrender.
I am bound here, to this earth,
by forces invisible, unyielding,
as though something stronger than me
has decided I must stay.
In that surrender,
there is peace, like the quiet after a storm,
when the air is thick with the promise of rain.

I take comfort in the images of them—
the way their skin once brushed against mine,
how their touch was always certain,
always the promise of safety.
I no longer seek to hold it,
for it is already part of me,
woven into my own skin,
a thread that never breaks.
And in the stillness of my longing,
I surrender again,
not to absence, but to the love
that has taken root deep in me—
its quiet hum a reminder
that, even now, I am held.