The 7th Brother

I suppose I am like the 7th Chinese Brother: whom his brothers always tried to keep happy and smiling because his great salt tears could drown whole villages.  All the tears that I had shed for humanity, for this world, for you, by all rights there should be no dry land left.

I have never shed so many tears for one person.  Tonight I felt that I could outcry even the 7th Brother himself: drowning the world in a deluge of my own making.  For a moment even my age old faith in the invincibility of the human spirit slipped and in my horror I said, “Oh God, she’s really going to break – for Christ’s sake stop writing! I don’t want to see this!”

I could picture my tears flooding the streets and sweeping Guelph away: down the Speed River, into the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St Lawrence River into the ocean where it would sink like a modern Atlantis beneath the waves.
Your faithless words tear at my soul as the deluge continues: “I am inadequate, but so are we all.” Your words cut through me like a hot knife through butter.  “Inadequate,” no, how can anyone be inadequate? We all have a purpose here – but even my unshakable conviction in our inner strength has begun to wither in this downpour.

Even sweeping this city away into the deeps would not satisfy my sorrow and my tears would continue to flow until the landmasses had all but vanished.  Soon there would be only me, standing on some barren pinnacle of rock – the last remains of Terra Firma – staring out over the lonely expanse of salt-water.  A castaway of my own making, my tears finally spent.

I can never be a pacifist.  A fighting man is doomed to fight.  Peace is always fleeting, to the point where I find solace in watching insects mating, and you, for awhile I found it in your arms as well.  Sweet oasis, where have you gone? Are you still there, somewhere in those hollow ocean depths?

You may not know it, but you are a hero in this struggle.  Your body covered in the scars of war.  I wish I could heal you, but I can’t even put a dent in your early-morning allergies.  I guess I was never much use to you.  I try though.  I don’t want to see the world drown.