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Ripple Affect: Do You See Your Own Distorted Reflection?
She walked along the sea, tossing pebbles without thought.
He was far in the distance, but closing fast, an enlarging dot.
"Why do you throw them as you do?" He asked the girl at last.
She turned to eye him warily, and murmured, "Why worry about the past?"
He stood shaking in anger, and slowly said, "Don't you know?"
Well now the girl was confused and scared, and turned to go.
He stopped her with a look and said, "Each pebble has an affect."
She didn't know what he meant to say, no truth she could collect.
"You throw stones as if they make no ripples, as if each single one
does not run into the other, changing shape before the first has begun."
The girl stared at the rock in her hand, then chucked it to the waves.
"What's a ripple," she said, "to so dictate how I behave?"
The boy pointed to the surface of the glassy water, now marred as it was.
Through the distortion, she could see her face and smiled because.
"You smile," he cried, "as you see only your face. See what I see."
And he pointed to the side, where the waves told a different story.
She saw a child, a child's face, dark and thin, and eyes that cried.
"What happened?" She gasped. He said, "Because of you he died."
She now saw multiple faces in the sea, each one with tear-stained eyes.
And she wondered how she’d been blind before, believed such pretty lies.
“I want to change!” she cried. “How do I save them?” But the boy had gone.
And she was left to face herself, and the sea she now laid her frightful eyes upon.
The water had calmed, and the surface was once more smooth, perfect.
The faces had faded into one big mirror, reflecting her own, a terrible verdict.
She knew how she had killed them and how she was but a tiny pebble in a vast sea.
That her own careless waste had taken food from the mouths of the hungry.
And that even her inaction was a ripple, a bullet, a single act that might have saved.
She wondered how it seemed a small thing to not care, yet killed and depraved.
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