(Sharon Kingston, Rilke's Sunset)
Well, I'm definitely home again now. The boy slept at my place last night. I have two lives, separated by nothing. I suppose that many people do.
I need to find a woman with three lives, maybe more. I would describe my preference for the shape of those lives, though that might seem far too Roman of me. An emotionally complete woman with her own car and place to live would be acceptable enough. It would be nice if she did not have too much back hair, also. Little matter, that. Those things are easily enough fixed. Just look at me above the neck of my shirt. No one ever has to know. It's our secret now, baby.
The phone bill is due. I forgot to change the plan back after jacking it up to cover the excess minutes of my waning marriage. So, I just throw money from the back of a train.
I truly have nothing of value to say today. I am on the verge of a new life, but am not quite there yet. The old life keeps dragging me back towards it. The gravity of it like circling a black hole, awaiting the moment where events can no longer affect an outside observer, where my mass is split apart forever, spewing the invisible energy back out into the still-life void.
I'm okay with it, of course, I have no choice. It just seems to be taking forever.
Sunset
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs towards heaven, one sinks to the earth.
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs-
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
- Rilke
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