The Song of Achilles
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Read between July 12 - July 25, 2023
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I would marry her, and we would have a child. Perhaps if I had never known Achilles.
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The sound that comes from him is hardly human. “I tried to stop him! I told him not to leave the beach!”
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The breath rasps in his throat. “Do you think I do not hope the same?” he asks.
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“Patroclus! Wait! I am here!” He shakes the body beside him. When I do not answer, he weeps again.
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“Philtatos,” Achilles says, sharply. Most beloved.“Best of men, and slaughtered by your son.”
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“When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”
96%
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I am made of memories.
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I ALMOST REFUSE. But the ache for him is stronger than my anger. I want to speak of something not dead or divine. I want him to live.
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I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms.
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“I have done it,” she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. ACHILLES, it reads. And beside it, PATROCLUS.
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“Go,” she says. “He waits for you.”
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IN THE DARKNESS, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred...
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