TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

I have a hard time not using metaphors and analogies in everyday conversation. My kids sometimes tease me about it: “Look out, the poet has entered the chat!” my son recently laughed. 

Maybe it is a poet thing, but I think we all naturally use analogies and comparisons when we’re trying to explain an experience. Even children do this, because the power of metaphor and analogy — of comparison — is that it helps people understand what you mean. It just clicks.  

Here’s a recent example. I had an experience with someone who has repeatedly broken my trust. I’d given them multiple chances, but I kept being disappointed. I was telling a friend about this, and I said, “I should know better by now. It’s like Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. Lucy holds the football and promises Charlie Brown that she won’t yank it away — not this time. But she always does. It’s like that,” I said. “I’m Charlie Brown. I need to stop expecting different results.”

Comparing my situation to Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football is not a poetic way to describe the situation. Not at all! It’s a little silly. But I do think it captures something understandable: It isn’t just painful when someone repeatedly breaks your trust, it’s also embarrassing. Because you tell yourself you should have known better. As my therapist used to say, “Trust the pattern.” That phrase alone was worth her hourly rate. 

Today’s poem uses metaphor so skillfully, so surprisingly. I think once you hear the end, you’ll want to listen one more time to feel it click again.

Amalgam
by Rebecca Foust

Mostly, what I didn’t know didn’t hurt me
until it did. The filling felt good, solid,

strong & forever. It was what people did
back then, when they could. I was glad

I would not wind up like my father, toothless
& old & alone. I accepted an amalgam

willingly, if not with full knowledge
that lead leaches out over time & builds up

in the body, sometimes seen later in X-ray
as a silver bracelet or anklet or ring.

That is not to say I regret getting the filling 
or it was all bad—I don’t, & it wasn’t.

It plugged an aching void & lasted most 
of my life, 46 years. We were a team.

When the time came to remove it, I hoped
for an easy extraction, replacement

with something less toxic & reactive, then
to go on as before. But the filling was

welded to bone, wedded to me in every cell.
When the drill bit in, my tooth crumbled

like spackle around a core stronger than what
it had filled. My tongue was incredulous,

seeking the hole in my gum, a deep, branching
chasm where roots used to be.

One kind of pain exchanged for another.
Metal still in my body, shining bright in bone.

How could I have imagined divorce
would be otherwise?

"Amalgam" by Rebecca Foust. Used by permission of the poet.