Work Text:
i try to make sense of the worlds i don’t know
through song.
one note plucked at a time
the same way you take a single step
each day of your journey.
(sometimes those steps fall back
and you retreat. kite that you are,
how can one begrudge you
your fright?
the song of humanity is corrupting
and so corruptible.)
reeds, bulrushes
swamps and marshes. these places
i know from the time that composes me.
yet i have never wandered from your side
even in death. nonexistence. the delight
of the wheel’s minute turning-of-fate.
how could i? if i am what brings you belonging
then anchour i must be. frenzied, unknowable
and ever-awake.
the stories i tell you from mondstadt’s past
make your gaze venomous with envy.
knights and masters. lords and retainers. you
(oh, you.)
find you most understand the world
when you are the second rung on the ladder,
forever staring up into the golden sky.
you’re sick with want. disgusted by it.
by yourself, the desires that shape
the shadows you cast upon fronds and fallen leaves.
i hope you never look at me that way
but you do. when my back is turned
and i pretend ignorance,
you yearn so deeply it could form
a well
so deep it could bore through the earth.
all i am is greed, you seem to say
or maybe
that’s what i project onto you,
mocking me.
long thought to be a mondstadt delicacy, there’s a place
beneath rex lapis’ statue, rising above the dunyu ruins
where fresh apples fall from the boughs of a tree.
for once, let yourself live deliciously.
let there be happiness before the fall
be it yours, mine, or His.
for us, the end is no more than a sunset away
and we hold entire lifetimes
in the palms of our connected hands.
you can rest. i won’t let you sleep eternal.
i’ll rouse you, with teeth and knees and touches
so gentle
they’ll make you cry
when spring lifts its head and sounds its horn
waking the monarch butterflies and cecilias.
maybe my next laugh
won’t be coloured with deceit,
and i’ll tell you about Them,
the one who saved me.
(oh, Them.)
we’re both lost beneath the chaff and wheat.
so if i gave you my hand,
would you rest with me a while?
shoulder-to-shoulder, nothing else
but the future right before us.