The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

“Do not let what you gained this day be so easily lost.”

crushing my lips to wine.

I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

I did not plan to live after he was gone.

You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

He is half of my soul, as the poets say.

In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.