Cracked.

There is a crack in my wall. It is a fault line. And I am at fault for it.

You can crack a puzzle. You can crack a joke. You can crack an egg and watch as the yolk drips out slow and lazy. Earthquakes cause cracks in the earth. Falling down can crack a bone. If a glass falls, it will probably crack into little shards, sharp and sparkly. If you are crazy, you are cracked. You can crack a code. Over time, walls can crack. Barriers can only stand strong for so long.

It is raining right now, and I see the drops through the cracks in my blinds. I almost see the whole picture, but it is fragmented, split into pieces.

The thunder cracks outside. It sounds painful, like the whole world is hurting, and, therefore, crying. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and sleep.

There are cracks in my nail polish, making it look sloppy. Nail polish hardly stays completely intact beyond the first day. You can pay a lot of money to get it done, but it will still crack over time, so might as well save the dollars.

I like to crack open sunflower seeds. Pistachio nuts are a bit harder, especially when the shell decides to be difficult, and you can break a nail trying to pull it apart.

When I was younger, I played this game where I would only step on the cracks in the sidewalk. I had to jump from one crack to another, without touching the unblemished part in the middle. I probably looked really silly, and I guess I didn’t realize that most people considered the cracks to be the bad part of the sidewalk, and that I should be more superstitious. To me, the cracks were the safe areas. I have always been a bit backwards.

Growing up, I knew this lady who had a giant crack between two of her teeth. I liked to look between it and see her like dingy hanging in the back of her mouth. I was weird. I guess I still kind of am. But because of braces and spending thousands of dollars at the Orthodontist, most people don’t have cracked teeth. Those little quirks have been erased.

Metal is hard to crack. Plastic is easier. Glass is easiest. Except cracking glass seems the saddest. It is the most delicate, and when it cracks, the beauty is being tarnished. And then you have to pick up the pieces. Maybe it is a defense mechanism that glass shards can pierce the skin – a warning not to break glass, or else you will get hurt. Maybe this is glass’s way of protecting itself. Or maybe glass is glass, and it is just sharp, no questions asked.

Glaciers crack, and nowadays, with the heating of the Earth, glaciers are melting. To watch something slowly crack, to hear it creak and groan – there is something sad about the process. What was once whole, no longer is. There are two instead of one, or ten instead of five. This multiplication can be scary and uncontrollable. Monitoring cracks is not simple.

However, you can crack a smile. This can brighten up a face. You can listen to popcorn crack as you wait to watch a movie. If you eat Rice Crispies, they are supposed to Crackle, Snap, and Pop. You can crack open a door or window and let the sunshine inside a room. A crack doesn’t have to be the splitting of something whole, but it can be the opening of something more.

There is a crack in my wall. Part of me feels the urge to cover it up, to hide it. This blemish is my fault. It is weird to think about how we have the ability to cause fault lines – to break and tear and split things apart. However, I can buy some caulk and fix the crack. I can cover it up and fill it in, until it feels smooth once more. I can do that. I have a choice.

There is a crack in my wall. It stands out and looks a bit funny. It demands attention and draws the eye. It is uneven and a bit awkward. Some might even say it is obnoxious. But, it stands out against the normality around it.

There is a crack in my wall. But, you know what – I kind of like it.