this is a love poem (until it isn't anymore) | kazuha

04

this is a love poem
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a wandering samurai who has left his homeland

life felt so strange from then onwards.

the loneliness which encased me every night felt less tight before i had been aware of their existence — before i had been aware that they breathed. it would rest beside my heart before thrashing against my rib cage like a bird with an exigence to break free and i'd wake with the insatiable need to see their face.

still, i am no preacher of strict morals and sheepishly, i admit to having actively sought them out at the same teahouse ever since our first meeting in hopes i'd see them again; and that i did. they had been a sort of irregular regular at the teahouse; showing up the next day or the day after that at different times without ordering the same thing in a row. however, i always held in confidence that no matter if they showed up that day, i'd still be able to see them that week and we'd sit and chat about the increasing military in inazuma to the placing of stars in the sky — they oddly liked the sky.

i learned later on through our blossoming friendship that y/n had only ever been half real; unbound to the mortal rules of this universe. i remember how the world would spin like a kaleidoscope around them as they waltzed with the teasing of the anemo archon's winds. even so, no matter how distant from this world they had felt, i had never felt far from them — ever. my thoughts always had a funny way of circling their way back to them without fail.

'kaz,' y/n called out to me one day while we were cloud gazing. kaz, they said; it was a nickname they had recently come up with that i enjoyed. it was a sort of intimate detail that i can't help but mention.

we had been taking a stroll through the vast forests of inazuma when we came across a field of lavenders which bloomed out from the ground. wanting to bask in the beauty of it all, we lied down still in the field letting the earth embrace our bodies.

'hmm?' i hummed out, feeling my eyelids droop. they laughed at the gesture.

'can you believe our god of eternity emerged from these same grounds?' they asked in morbid, sweet sultry, hands dancing with the lavender petals. my eyes opened slowly and peered up at them who had been staring down at me — sun glaring at the back of their head seeming more golden than gold. they had always asked such strange questions from time to time as if they had been so seemingly detached from reality entirely. i wanted so desperately to reach my hand out to them and hold their own in mine. i have nothing to hold; nothing to touch.

'i don't think it's so hard to deny,' i responded briefly. their eyes folded into small crescent moons when they smiled. lost in the crevices of their face i didn't realize until a moment later that they had already been looking back down at the flowers which laid beneath us, examining each flower closely.

'you know, i've heard street merchants say that lavender soften anxiety,' they said softly, eyes glazed over as if reminiscing old memories of street markets we'd once visited together; open to an impatient crowd in the soft and foggy mornings. 'i can't imagine such a distant archon such as our own being from a land so calm and serene.'

'you shouldn't trust the words of a merchant,' i had said, laughing in ignorance at their oddly suiting superstition. they huffed and i felt the april breeze hit the bare of my cheek once again.

'i'd say these words hold some sort of truth, actually.'

'really?' i asked coyly. they rolled their eyes at me before their eyes drew up to the sky where the clouds drifted past the heavenly rays of the sun.

'really,' they had said. 'this is the calmest i've ever felt.'

then and only then had i caught a glimpse of the ghost which encompassed them. 

koizuha
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unedited