“All I want is peace,” you whispered in your lover’s arms one March night. The nightingales were out and about, singing their sweet tune as the stars whispered their corpses on your skin.
Toji looked down upon you, his fingers rough and crass from war and battle. He knew nothing but paroxysm, the blood that swept from pain, but knew to be gentle with you.
You were made from peace. You were swept into war.
“Peace? In these clans?” He snorted, shaking his head, his green eyes glinting. His thumb rubbed against your cheek and the faint scent of blood wafted through your nostrils.
The clans didn’t know of the black sheep of the Zenin clan and you, and that was the way you preferred it. They were warbringers of hatred, harbingers of pain.
“Mm, yeah. I just want a long life of peace. We could move to Kamakura together and we’d have a million stray pets, and you’d work as a fisherman and I’d be a vet and we could spend forever there together. Peace.”
“I’m not getting shit on by your rabid flea dogs.”
You turned around and scowled at him before pinching his cheek. “They are not rabid. And they are perfectly well mannered creatures that have been trained.”
He rolled his eyes and laughed before wrapping you tighter in his arms.
Peace was a real option when you both had a small house in Kamakura.
Dream became reality, and somehow you became lost in consciousness.
Loving Toji Zenin was hard. That much was evident. Crass and cold, he often didn’t speak to you for days. He was no fisherman; he proclaimed it to be a waste of his talents. What he could do was kill , and Toji was filled with no peace when he stepped out of that tiny house.
“Hello God,” you whisper, your hands clasping together as you sit at the edge of the bed. You are no religious woman, but there’s something heavenly between these four walls. “It’s me again.”
You put your head on the bed and close your eyes, taking a deep breath. A few hours ago, you were with your lover. Now he has stormed out to find his eye of the storm.
It is not you. You know that. You can only pray he finds peace.
“I hope that you’ll show him what peace truly is,” you say, and there is a sinking feeling in your gut that you might not be enough for him. It is a silly thought. Toji is one of many voices and he speaks as loudly as he can after being cooped up for so long in his life, but it’s an insecurity that runs as deep as the Ganges.
And after you’re done talking with God, you will walk from your bed and go outside. You will go to your true creator, and you will put your hands on the dirt and allow Nature to guide your tears to nourish the ground.
He calls you a tree hugger jokingly sometimes. His mouth curves as he does so, the edge of his lip shining, and he leans forward, his green eyes twinkling. You damn tree hugger, he said one time when you chastised him for putting paper in the plastic bin. Fine. Only because I love you so much.
Something cathartic comes to sitting in the grass and watching the stars come out. You will your lover to come home.
He will come home after so long. It will feel like eons.
The blades of the grass weep with you as you will run to his arms and let him hug you. He will pepper your face with kisses.
“Dear God, it’s me again.”
You let out a sigh and close your eyes before squeezing your palms together. You’re out by the beach with the moonlight trickling along the short waves. The wind is voluptuous, all consuming and blows your hair past.
It’s another argument. He’s been gone a lot more, picked up more jobs, stayed away from home more. There’s more money on the table but less of him.
Because when he leaves after arguments, that’s not peace; that’s the calm after the storm. That’s the hollowness in your gut consuming you whole. That’s sorrow.
“Can we stop being angry ?”
You weep and your tears return back to the ocean and you’re reminded that you stem from her. And when you die your arteries will stretch like roots and dig yourself deep into the ground from where you belong. The tides pull you in and you sniff as you watch them roll back and forth in a comforting lulling notion.
Your throat constricts, and tears blur at the edges of your eyes. The depths call to you.
“There’s no fucking way you’re still awake. Fuck.”
Toji stands ahead of you with blood on his hands as he stares at you, his green eyes glinting in the darkness. Your shoulders square as you stare at your lover.
Why is vulnerability so hollow?
It takes and it takes and it feels like he can crawl inside of you and break you apart like you’re some fragile matryoshka doll. You wish you could be like one; each one perfect and smaller than the other.
Cowards, the both of you.
You stop. You know he’ll climb mountains and cross deserts and forge valleys to find the right words.
“Let’s go to sleep.” Toji stares at you and he purses his lip together before stepping forward. All you can see is the broad expanse of his back and you’ve remembered every muscle there, every scar.
Is your best friend turning into a stranger?
Please don’t make him go.
But it isn’t him that goes first.
You will wake up one day and it will be the last time he ever walks out. You will run to him as fast as you can but he is a trained assassin and will disappear with the wind.
“Come back!” You will scream. “I need you!”
He doesn’t need you. He needs someone else. Her. Funnier. Calmer. Less cracked and hollow in the inside. When he stretches her heart, she complies. She can mold to what he wants to be and keep herself. You are hollow, a shell of what you possess.
I beg you to love me. I beg. I don’t beg for anyone but here I am unraveling myself, undressing myself bare and begging you to love me.
There’s no god in the ocean.
Instead, she wafts you up on the shore. Your body fertilizes in the ground and in a few years, he builds his home near you.
She plants a tree on the soil you nourish.
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