The Ripple Paid Forward

This is the hardest fight I’ve ever held my fists up to, broke my own throat with the scream that spoke like a whisper, but felt like a mountain crumbling into a river to show the river how to be more than a ripple. I was more than a ripple, but with all the trying, my efforts went under and I watched myself drown there. I saw you watching from the banks… I heard you say, keep going… keep trying, but you didn’t offer your hand to me because it was covered in pain. I took a deep breath that day, crawled out from the bus I was under, and saw a smile somewhere that mattered more than mine ever could. I was looking in your eyes. I wanted to feel that one more time.. but I never can. So when I searched the room for my heart to be a piñata busting open with confetti, love.. I missed. Tore a vein instead, but I remembered your eyes in that moment, borrowed the memory of that light before I went dark, and for the only minute that mattered, it saved me just enough to stay and search for the light inside that is capable of making any ripple at all, even if it’s from the tiniest pebble, the smallest smile. It is the hope we carry, like a grain of salt… and that one grain is enough to save a life.. sometimes.

-Stephanie Bennett-Henry

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