The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

The hour her sentence was finished, she ran out of the house and dove back into the sea.

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead.

His fingers touched the strings, and all my thoughts were displaced. The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. It was like no music I had ever heard before. It had warmth as a fire does, a texture and weight like polished ivory. It buoyed and soothed at once.

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.

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

The yearning for him is like hunger, hollowing me.