The Quiet Fire

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

When do we wake,
when do we break—
the spell, the silence,
the long, slow sinking?

A ship drifts blind,
rudderless in waters it stains.
Storm-tossed, we call it fate,
call it history—
but the hands at the helm
have always been the same.

Listen:
the wood splinters under stolen weight.
Listen:
laughter, silver-thin,
floating above the bodies
bailing water with bare hands.

And we—
we are the deckhands of ruin,
adrift in our own forgetting.

On the hill, the great house rots,
but see how the gates glimmer,
how gold glows
against the bones of the hungry.
Inside, the future is bartered
like small change—
a child’s dream cut down,
shredded into wages
that never reach the table.

When the last candle sputters,
when the window stays dark,
when the rope frays
into nothing but dust,
who will say
we didn’t know
this was coming?

How many mothers will hold
the cold weight of their children,
whispering names
already erased from the ledger?
How many hands will reach
for the loaves thrown like scraps,
while the feast remains untouched?

But this—
this is how silence is made,
how hunger is shaped into obedience,
how crumbs become currency
for those who take
and take
and take.

And we—
we are the ones watching,
still and breathless,
as if the house is not ours,
as if the ship is not ours,
as if the fire will not find us
in the end.

But this is not survival.
This is surrender.

The ship, the house,
the rope, the bread—
they are all in our hands.
And it is we
who must decide
whether to watch the fire burn
or to rise before the ash
becomes our inheritance.

Let us stand.
Let us break the hush
before silence writes the ending.

Let us rise,
before the wreckage
makes its claim.