The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; 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.

The yearning for him is like hunger, hollowing me. Somewhere his soul waits, but it is nowhere I can reach.

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.