Then:
Water it can save
It can kill
It can help
Like a gift
It can uplift
Use it wrong and it can drift
Turn into a storm
Kill those who rely
And those who deny
Now:
I didn’t know then
the truths my words might hold
or what they could become.
I didn’t understand how
something so small,
so innocent,
could carry so much power,
be so endlessly generous,
yet quietly dangerous.
While the right thing is
to use it for good,
to share this gift
to where it heals,
not where it hurts,
it is still so easy to misuse,
to hide intentions,
to take advantage,
to turn this help into harm,
kindness into control.
That even one person's selfishness
can ruin it for everyone;
for those who need it,
and even those who
might take it for granted.
Now, I once thought storms
appeared out of nowhere,
never understanding how they formed.
But I now see they begin
in smaller places,
ones we cannot see,
like words left unsaid,
a feeling ignored,
a silence that only builds upon itself.
And if the rain won’t fall,
the flood will come anyway.
Destruction and creation
start from the same source,
share the same beginning;
it just depends on how we treat it,
so we must do so carefully.
What is gone does not vanish;
it changes form.
A butterfly was once a caterpillar.
I was once a kid
in middle school,
doing an assignment I thought meaningless.
Now it has taught me something
much more meaningful:
I am made not of what survived,
but by what decayed,
yet still found a way to bloom.
