Episode 23: The Crack in the Wall
Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing as well as you can be today. Our poem this week discusses the painful feeling of longing to be like someone else, which can often be confused with both looking up to someone and idolizing them. Of course, these are very different things! It’s a wonderful thing to be inspired by someone’s vibe or style, but this can easily trickle into self-worth/esteem/confidence and comparison traps. Through a more storytelling-focused poem, this episode breaks down what separates us in these ways, specifically how longing to be like someone else (as a tendril of not feeling like we’re enough) is a reflection of both the need to look inward and acknowledging that the other person perhaps needs to do the same (and inviting them to do this with you, if possible). The poem is about seeing ourselves in others, others in ourselves, and knowing where and how old the walls, buildings, boxes of comparison truly are.
I’ll share it with you now:
There she was:
Frankline (Frankie),
clear faced & breakfasting
on her fast 10:07 break,
fearless with
blue brushed brows and
purple painted lip & lid liners
in the Coffee Crescent Café—
the one
with the clean curly lettering
& superb branding:
spilt wine, lime, cinnamon,
grass, and both midnight & robin egg blue.
This is where she is
forever framed by stained glass
and/or clay mug curbs beneath
vanilla, lavender, and caramel syrup,
classy, abstract paintings by local artists,
fireplace/woodsmoke crackling wick candles,
mason jars with missing lids
and reusable straws & totes & bean scoops.
If only I could say how I wish to be her
each morning on my way to class,
behind her well-placed yet lackadaisical
slab-of-wood-counter, probably a much
more vibrant writer with such flawless aesthetic
that it must have been her aura
that refurbished this three-hundred-year-old
building last spring, aside from the outer layer
of original brick wall.
But then, I imagine plucking a brick
from the old building like a book from a shelf.
What story would each hold & tell?
There are thousands of brick books
per building, so says the internet, gaps
to grasp them sealed with mortar until
the grains of stories and truths
finally break their bonds free,
crumbling the building to bits
under their new gas-phase weight
because
the more brick books you free
from their shelves,
the faster the building falls.
No one quite knows this place or
what it used to be. It was
abandoned decades ago.
Or maybe they do and
that’s why it was rebuilt so soon…
repurposed so resourcefully…
But that’s all I know and
all I’ve ever seen of her life—
the outside façade,
seemingly infrangible.
And then, on my way out the door,
I stumbled on a loose floorboard,
ducking, accidentally, making
uncomfortably close eye contact
with a basement brick.
Well
well
well.
It’s cracked.
A hole in the wall.
A joint. A fontanel. Wait,
there were more…
weep holes.
I set my coffee down,
turned toward the counter,
looked directly at Frankie
and said, “I need 3 knives
that will work like pick axes.”
She grinned, first unclipping the tops
from every fireplace/woodsmoke
crackling wick candle,
lit them with successive lighter clicks,
and tossed the previously concealed
mesh bag of mason jar lids in the sink,
not lost afterall,
but as invisible as glass ceilings.
She beamed at me now
as they clanged.
And I realized
I’d never actually seen
her smile before.
Breathe the words in. What do they make you feel or think? How did they connect with your senses? What colours or symbols did you notice? What meaning did you draw? Metaphors? Interpretations? Clarity? Messages?
