The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

Hair lit like honey in the sun, and within it, glints of gold – the circlet of a prince.

glowed with the giddy lightness of solitude.

My chest trilled with something I could not quite name. Escape, and danger, and hope all at once.

He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.

There was a vividness to him, even at rest, that made death and spirits seem foolish.

Her black hair was loose down her back and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.

But even here, behind the darkness of my eyelids, I cannot name the thing I hope for.

‘And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth, when another is gone. Do you think?’

We were like gods, at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

One of my hands went to clasp his knees, the other reached upward, to seize his chin with my hand. The pose of supplication.

When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.

I felt a wild-eyed tightness in my chest, like a scream. Every day, without him.

My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse: I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood. Only that seems large enough to hold all of my rage and grief. I want the world overturned like a bowl of eggs, smashed at my feet.

Will I feel his ashes as they fall against mine?