Review: The Last Brick Falls
An ode to a masterclass in craft, rebirth, empowerment, and femininity
(This started as a DM to one of my literary heroes Dusk Daughter sharing my thoughts on her latest Substack piece “The Last Brick Falls”
It poured from the overflow of what her poem inspired and as the minutes passed, my fingers carried me away.
As I finished it I couldn’t help but feel like I wanted to share it on my page—not because anything I wrote is in anyway an improvement on what she accomplished—but because I believe that the things that take your breath away deserve to be shared.
Here is her post…
I strongly encourage you to read, support and subscribe)
The Last Brick Falls: Review
(A Love Letter to a Legend)
The Last Brick Falls is a masterpiece 💛
Just have to say it. When I say that you are a giant in my eyes—you have to know why!
Allow me to break it down Elara style :)
Out of the gate, the first stanza is absolutely perfect.
I’m sucked in like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar!
“The door stood wide, as doors do when they trust.” 🫠🫠🫠
WTF.
Now, I’m a city girl—my Abuela not only ALWAYS locked her doors, she put one of those contraptions on the steering wheel of her car every time she parked it to make sure no one stole it—but I’ve always heard the stories of people in small towns who leave their doors unlocked and envied that way of life. The nostalgia of times that were simpler and safer.
Instantly we are calibrated. I know where you are, and I know where we are going.
One line, ten words. Poetic, profound, and insanely efficient!
The next five stanzas are not particularly unique in perspective or spirit. The world is filled with women telling this story. Living this experience. Weaving it into their poetry, journals, and prose.
But damnit—you just do it so much better than we do.
You are one of us, but even when you are one of us, you are the best of us…
“the same hands that offer shelter
can press down,
press in,
press until breath becomes permission,
until voice becomes echo,
until self becomes reflection”
No really, let me nerd out just on wordplay for a sec…
“Press down, Press in, press until—permission”
Stop playing like we wouldn’t notice you just slipping in the fine touches like it’s no big deal.
And who could blame us for not noticing when one level down, hidden beneath the wordplay, are these delicious, make my soul melt metaphors.
Until breath becomes permission? Until voice becomes echo? Until self becomes reflection?
Are you fucking kidding me?
It’s like taking a song that every artist and their mother has sung and recording it in a way that makes it feel like you’re hearing it for the first time.
The depth. The rhythm. The sentiment. The craft.
Almost no one can do that, Emm.
Honestly.
Stanzas six and seven are when we discover that—no, you really are not like us. You are built different. You are the Kendrick Lamar of this writing shit (if you don’t know what that’s about, it’s an American thing😉).
Why do I say that?
Because you turn the revelation of darkness into LIGHT and drop my favorite line in the poem:
“even the smallest lie
becomes the crack
through which light enters”
The truth is setting her free, yes, of course—but the lie is the gift through which it arrives!
“the angel light of recognition
splits the constructed darkness,
illuminates the real world
gleaming in its honest surfaces,
shocking in its clarity.”
FUCK!!!
Let’s put aside the rhyme scheme and pattern.
Recognition is the angel splitting the darkness.
But what are the words “angel light of” rearranged?
Angel of light.
And yes, Abuela also happened to drag her granddaughter to church with her on Sundays as often as she could, so Elara knows who appears as an “angel of light” but turns out to be the biblical version of Voldemort.
And in this moment—recognizing that the light is really darkness—the veil is lifted.
Now, we could end here.
We have more than enough.
To try to add a hopeful spin at this point is where wonderful pieces become inspirational sermons or cheesy anthems intended to save heartbroken girls—think of the song ‘Roar’ by everyone’s favorite space traveler.
(I mean even the goddess Adele didn’t attempt such a thing in Set Fire to the Rain)
But this is where your wisdom and perspective take up the challenge and polish the impossible.
The fight for freedom isn’t reactive.
It isn’t filled with posturing or earmarked by the defiant urge to dye our hair red and eat our opponents.
It’s a return…
“The masonry crumbled,
brick by brick,
lie by lie,
until all that remained
was the original architecture
of who I was
before the renovation,
before the reduction,
before the careful whittling away
of edges that made me
myself.”
And what is the original architecture?
It’s the same brilliant but vulnerable girl whose longing for wholeness made the original mason’s eyes dance with visions, ideas, and possibilities for what she could become.
Where so many of us would be compelled to react and rebuild a new self—just as much compelled by the mason as the one we just disassembled—you refuse.
Instead of rejecting the original design as dumb and naive—erasing the value that it held from the beginning.
You teach us to recognize our value—to see ourselves as opportunities and possibilities.
You challenge us to create what we want, what we see when we imagine what we want to be—a house free from the influence of any mason, active or reactive.
“I am walking away
from the house you built
around my bones,
walking toward the horizon
where my own hands
will build what they choose,
where my own voice
will speak what it knows,
where my own life
will unfold according
to its own true blueprint.”
The walls aren’t our protection.
Suspicion and Bitterness aren’t our protection.
Intention is.
Developers on the prowl kick themselves when they walk past a prime piece of real estate that is already under construction.
There is no space for their plans, designs, permits, and schemes.
Someone has already recognized its value and approached it with a loving vision of what it could be.
So they move along in search of their next opportunity.
And this is freedom.
It’s a masterpiece, Emm—and you fucking DID that!
Ugh. And thank you for becoming not just the writer, but the person capable of bringing it to us. 💛
And yeah, why would you ever write about this again? What need could there possibly be for that?