Secret Dam

The toddler boy falls, legs broken, chasing his big brother onto the roof. Nobody saw him fall, not even his brother. Now he’s crying in the backyard. He wanted to touch the stars. He thought climbing the stairs to the roof would do it. It didn’t. There’s a plane up there, swimming among the stars. He thinks the plane’s blinking lights are the stars. He stops crying. He thinks the stars are coming down to hug him. They don’t. He learns how to keep stopping crying.

It’s getting too late to be a little toddler. So he grows up to a big toddler. The broken legs become crooked roots. He’s stuck in the little backyard garden, where he fell. He knows the only way to the stars is to grow wings. He thinks — one day I’ll be a huge tree with the biggest wings ever. I’ll flap them so hard I’ll carry the whole planet closer to the sky, and then I can touch the stars. The real ones, not those dumb airplane lights.

The twenty-three-year-old toddler falls and breaks his wings. He was chasing the stars in the sea’s sparkles. When the sun breaks into a million pieces and shines over the waves on a long afternoon. Nobody saw him fall. Now he’s on the sand, not crying. Because he knows how to keep stopping crying. Instead, he swallows all the sea sparkles, pushes them down into a little reservoir in his belly.

The thirty-one-year-old toddler built a dam in his closet. His belly was too small for all the tears. Every night, when everyone’s asleep, he goes to his secret dam and empties all the sparkling tears he collected that day. He’s seen other people with lots of tears. But nobody else has a secret dam. Everyone else sits in a little boat floating in a narrow stream of tears, they call it a river. They cry into their little river to keep the boat moving. They call it a river, but he thinks it’s not even a tiny stream. What a joke. He wants more than that. He wants a great flood. Wild, too powerful to control. Too destructive to be liked. Too messy to be respected. He wants it wild.

The forty-two-year-old toddler has a plan. His legs are still crooked, he’s still stuck in the backyard, his wings are still broken. There’s only one way left to the stars: break the dam and flood his world with sea sparkles. Those magical sparkles he’s been saving in his secret closet dam aren’t exactly stars, but they’re close.

There’s a problem. The dam is too big and too strong to break. He doesn’t have anything that can break a dam that big… except sin tears. Sin tears come when he doesn’t let himself cry the sparkling tears. But they’re still tears. They can fill up the dam even faster. Then there’s hope… when he’s worthy of a flood, the dam will break.

But the more he sins, the less worthy he is of a flood, and the stronger the dam gets. He thinks those millions of gallons of tears will wash away his sins, by drowning him in sweet dreams.

He weeps. For he has sinned. Will the dam break? 

He weeps. For he has sinned. Will the dam break?

Will the dam break?

Will 

the dam

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