~Image by Artem Kurgan from Pixabay~

"Hiraeth," he called me,
even when he did not know.
I recognised Raeth, of the sands,
and believed he thought of me as home,
The earth from which his heart is made.

"Hiraeth," he murmured longingly,
Even as his fingers cupped my face,
I was not what he could see,
I had dreamed, as had he,
and the whole time we were just searching,
for a word neither understood,
for a word we could lose in loving.

In the end, I was for him, the meaning,
in my folly I believed to be.
Like sand I slipped away from him,
and he was Hiraeth,
a lost home to me.

 ~Yusra, "Calliope's Lyre"~