the-song-books.yossr

WHY DO YOU not go to him?
“I cannot.” The pain in her voice is like something tearing. “I cannot go
beneath the earth.” The underworld, with its cavernous gloom and fluttering
souls, where onlyy the dead mayy walk. “This is all that is left,” she sayys, her
eyyes still fixed on the monument. An eternityy of stone.
I conjure the boyy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands.
His green eyyes laughing into mine. Catch, he sayys. Achilles, outlined
against the skyy, hanging from a branch over the river. The thick warmth of
his sleepyy breath against myy ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. Myy
fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms.
The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the
stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boyy who was both.
THE SUN IS SETTING over the sea, spilling its colors on the water’s surface.
She is beside me, silent in the blurryy, creeping dusk. Her face is as
unmarked as the first dayy I saw her. Her arms are crossed over her chest, as
if to hold some thought to herself.
I have told her all. I have spared nothing, of anyy of us.
We watch the light sink into the grave of the western skyy.
“I could not make him a god,” she sayys. Her jagged voice, rich with grief.
But you made him.
She does not answer me for a long time, onlyy sits, eyyes shining with the
last of the dyying light.
“I have done it,” she sayys. 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.
“Go,” she sayys. “He waits for yyou.”
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 of the sun.
https://books.yossr.com/en