The German Poet

“Like one who has traveled distant oceans, am I among those who are forever at home.” Rainer Maria Rilke, German, born December 4, 1875, Prague, Czechia. Death: December 29, 1926. Wrote The Loner (of which that line above is present) in French, along with a series of other poems referred to as “The Roses.”

“Why do you know this, why do you care?” He asks me through the photo on his wikipedia article. His fuzzy, frowning mustache, slicked back hair, piercing eyes, staring at me from behind the layers of age. Face squished against the pillow, I must look like a guppy to this lovely, dead poet.

“I don’t know, I don’t care, I guess.” I whisper, answering his rhetorics.

I flick off the phone and turn onto my back. Eyes have not adjusted to the black and so for now I am a part of nothing.

“Am I among those who are forever at home.” Not a question but a statement.

I am, but uncertainty lay in my phrasing. I am, but how long is “forever,” and what is a home? It’s been so long since the palpable feeling of worn, recognizable carpet has poked between my toes. Friendly carpet, or familiar bedsheets, or grass that’s just been mowed by a father.

Suddenly the room is awakening in the low sun. Staring, not into the nothingness of black, but the melancholy grey of morning, which always makes me more depressed. A picture of them and their kids is perched on the bedside table like a bird waiting to start it’s song of rejoice. I wait for it to sing, but I’m only met with Stacy’s now more deeply cut laugh lines and crow's feet, the ones that used to rule her face like faint whispers of the future. She’s very pretty, boys always thought so too. She was invited out far more than I was that semester of college. Now she’s settled down amongst the other houses of suburbia, and I am here too, among them like the property with uncut hedges and damaged siding that the neighborhood has collectively decided to despise. But there is no need to worry--instead of slapping on a new set of paint--it’ll get bulldozed, a forgotten dirt patch with exposed plumbing.

I hear the clatter of the morning down the hallway and wait until the children’s voices have disappeared into the summer before putting on my only set of clean clothes, making the guest room bed, straightening whatever I might’ve messed up and heading out into the bright, bright world, which makes me the most depressed.

“Morning, Amber.” Says Stacy, who’s cleaning off the kitchen table.

“Good morning.”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Really well, thank you.” Lies.

“What’re you hungry for? I made extra pancakes but I also have eggs and bacon I can whip up.”

“Pancakes sound great, thank you.” I sit down at the freshly wiped table and when Stacy, my first and only college roommate, my once best friend, my pal, serves me blueberry pancakes and pours me a glass of almond milk because I’m lactose intolerant, I feel like a child, a baby. The stoic presence of her husband ignoring me while he watches TV in the other room only adds to the nostalgic aloofness of my father in childhood.

She sits down in the chair next to me with her coffee cup. She sips while I eat.

“Hey,” I say, “remember that German poet we studied in Lit class?”

“Sort of, remind me.”

“Rainer Maria Rilke.”

“Oh, that sounds familiar. He wrote all those poems in French, didn’t he?”

“He did.” I say, and lean back in my chair, full, “The Roses.” I almost whisper.

She shakes her head and sips again.

“‘The things I brought back with me seem strange here and out of place. In their own land they moved like animals, but here they hold their breath in shame.’” I recite.

“Hm?”

“It’s Rilke.”

“Oh. You know you always did love Lit class.” she says, “why didn’t you continue?”

The question insults me, but how offended can you really allow yourself to become when you’re sitting at someone’s kitchen table, eating their food, having slept in their guest room the night before? The presence of these gifts humbles me.

The presence of her, her home, my alternative, my future, my past. I look around at the walls, the decor, her face, still pretty, the sound of the Price is Right, bleeding from the living room, the resentment we all feel.

“I don’t know,” I answer, the most honest reason I had ever offered for that particular question. I’m usually on the defense because of my parents accusing tone.

She shakes her head again and sips.

How I’ve embodied it. How it’s been fed by the constant temptation of consumerism, of the ideas, of motivation and the spurts of productivity, and then when I cool, when I slow, everyone still seems to be asking questions of “how.” And me? I’m still stuck on the “why.” Why bother? Didn’t you get sick of working hard for nothing all that time? I want to ask, but I don’t. I just listen to the theme song that embodies colorful objects rotating on a screen in front of her husband. Her kindness that I’ve taken advantage of. Her home. Her blueberry pancakes. It is not mine.

“Well you can stay here until you get your feet back on the ground.”

“That’s fine, thank you, this is all I needed.” And just like that I’m up, standing at the front door, staring at the--not in use--laugh lines on her face. “Thank you again, Stacy.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay longer?” She does not get up from her seat, I take this as a sign of relief that I’ve decided to go.

I turn the knob and smile, “I’m sure.”

“Goodbye, Stacy.”

“Goodbye, Amber.”

With all my things I drive down Stacy’s street, let the sun warm the car.

Rilke sits next to me, slicked back hair, mustache, he looks ridiculous in my car, this lovely, dead poet. “The crowded days are spread across their tables, but to me the far-off holds more life.” He recites, watching the kids play soccer across lawns.

“Behind my face stretches a world, no more lived in, perhaps, than the moon. But the others leave no feeling alone, and all their words are inhabited.”

And as we drive through the world, two Loners since birth, I silently ponder if “I am among those who are forever at home.”