Fernweh

My 9th graders are working on Multi-Genre projects, where they address one topic (soccer, the future, rebellion, sleep) through many genres of communication. One person might have a collage, a short story, a persuasive essay, and a movie review, for example, all related to one central topic.

This Cambodian student's poem is part of her project on Fernweh (German, literally "farsickness"), the opposite of Heimweh ("homesickness"). Fernweh is similar to Wanderlust: the longing to venture to distant places, the ache for the faraway.  

I love how her poem drops me into another world and another heart. She wrote it completely independently, with no input from me. This class has some incredible writers!

You don't know where the feeling comes from,

or when it actually begins to stir in the pits

of your stomach and eventually overtakes your body

and your previous thoughts. It makes you numb with

emotions, but somehow you know precisely

what you were doing before it happened.

Time is slow; so slow, that you swear you can feel

the plates of the earth shifting, and hear the blood rushing

through your veins, and you're sure you've memorized every

chip and crook and cranny on the "antique" table you're

sitting at. You stare out the window, and the lazy

evening sunlight beams down on you, and you can

feel the rays growing weaker, and you suddenly realize that

the way the city lights begin to blink on, one by one, are like an

animal's eyes in the dusk, and the bustle of the city is quieter

than you would've wanted it to be, and suddenly you don't

quite know how to feel.

You know that you feel, quite suddenly, that this

apartment room is suddenly smaller than before, and the walls

are seemingly pressing in on you. Suddenly, you long

to be away from this small town, with the all too familiar faces

and the same bakery shop that has been there for

longer than your mom has been alive, and the supermarket that

everyone seems to go to, because there's nowhere

else to go - and you want to be on the other side of the world,

walking the streets that have been worn down with the feet

of millions of pedestrians that have scurried past

every day. You want to be where the city never sleeps,

sitting in a hushed room and listening to a cellist play; and thriving

in a sea of anonymity, falling in love with the glorious sights

and the wafting smells from a Mexican restaurant.

You long for a place you've never been to, a place

where you've only seen on a few postcards, and in your

own imagination. It is a kind of longing that strangely keeps

you going, that motivates you to finish school and continue

with your fine-just-fine life, until you will finally be able to

break free from this routine.