"The Dam"
by: michael g.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault that her dam broke. You can’t blame it on the girl, and you can’t blame it on the people who never noticed her.
It all starts when it all ends. Her tolerance has been diminished to a speck. She goes to school everyday, wondering if she’s capable of enduring another year of high school. She has few friends, and only herself with whom to share secrets. She keeps quiet when she sees Popularity Queen Michelle on the verge of tears over a bad hair day and an unexpected shortage of lipstick gloss. She remains silent when she sees other girls foolishly swooning over the most attractive jerk-off. She ignores these things, and moves on with life, trying to be the best person she can. All she wanted was someone to notice her.
Aside from all the things she tolerates, she has what you could call her emotional release. Everyday after school, she goes to the isolated banks of a river. When she gets there, she sits, thinks to herself, then cries. She doesn’t weep loudly, and she doesn’t kick and scream like a baby. She simply places her head on her knees, watches nature stirring in the trees surrounding her, then lets the tears fall from her cheeks. Her teardrops accumulate on the rocky banks and drip into the river. Her sadness becomes the river.
There comes a point when too much for one is enough for another. You see, every teardrop that anyone sheds becomes part of nature as long as nature exists. Most of the time, our tears fall to the ground, evaporate into the air, and become a raindrop. Her tears became part of a river. They floated down the river, toward her dam.
Eventually, she cried so many tears that the dam could not handle the volume. So, it broke. When there is too much pressure on one, it is enough for another to collapse.
This dam, known to others as her hope, collapsed under the immense pressure.
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©2001 mg
