Work Text:
Written by Rhyme after the battle on Umbara; coming face to face with those he shot at and finding, among the living, one who also writes poetry.
How is it
A novelty
To look into a brother’s face
And find that I
Am not unique
In ways I thought myself to be?
This one, too
has seen the rain
And tried to grasp the torrents’ lilt,
With desperate hope
That captured thus
These words might make sense of the pain
He told me
There are brothers here
Who sing the words I wrote back home
They laugh and shout within the rain;
Take heart amidst their grief and fear
I also find
He wrote The Song;
Those stanzas whispered in the dark
That aid many
Remembrances
After a battle, hard or long.
We sit together
In the night
Clinging to words of hope and peace
To know another sees the stars
Gives us strength for morning’s fight.
To sing in war
To push through pain
Is this a strength, or callus act?
But if, through this, a brother lives,
I’ll count my rhyming words as gain
Somehow I stand
In this relieved,
To find my heart so closely cloned.
To know, though lonely in the night,
We did not see beauty alone.