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It's just me here and not a moment goes by that I’m not thinking of where you are. I doubt you aren’t doing the same. How cruel that our souls continue to be tortured into the afterlife. I’m nothing but a roaming shade in a crowd of boastful men and their wives.
When I arrived I was amongst the crowd of warriors who had been ecstatic at the prospect of being here. Every single man and woman, proud, celebratory, drunk on the ease of afterlife. After knowing such things, it's not difficult to understand why I'm here in my own corner of this realm, alone. I'm the only one to ever feel dissatisfaction here.
I’m disgraced by some, ignored by others, but why does that matter? I never liked their lot even when I was alive.
How funny the fates are, cruel to us then and cruel to us now. I often teeter between our choices being our own and your choices being of another. I remember when I told you I’d fight in your place, in your armor. It felt as if my words weren’t my own. That my voice rang with the hundred tongues of something so divine, it would be impossible to have been of my own. There was something planting these ideas in my head, weaving them seamlessly into my thoughts and inner logic. Whether that was the Gods or the Fates, I will never know for sure.
But I also remember your eyes in that moment, so torn between the glory you came to Troy for, and me and what I wanted. You came to Troy to fulfil your destiny, and that we did, however I can’t help but imagine what kind of life we would’ve had otherwise. I see the faces of the boys your father took in to raise, their boisterous energy and stupid innocence. I was one of them and in knowing you, you made me more than them.
Achilles my love, Achilles my cruel lover.
Why is it that my very being relies on memories of you? There is no memory of the sun, the stars, of feasts, of happiness without you. How wonderful it would be to erase the worst of us and keep the best within me, but alas, the waters of the Lethe aren’t so selective.
Funny how the worst of you is the same as your best. Funny how I can't seem to be happy with what I had of you before when we were it all and did it all together. Well all except this— we had never been here together, on the faux grass of Elysium.
Why should I be content when I had been so greedy with you during life, when my heart beat to the speed of solemn breathing, when my hands seized every opportunity to simply be with you. Surely it was more fulfilling, having a body to share and touch with.
The anguish you caused me cannot be forgiven, but I am willing to have you— in any way I can— but what use is that? The fates aren’t known for being forgiving.
I remember what they called you, what I still think you are. They still murmur your name every now and then, wondering where you have gone. None of them have thought to ask me if I knew.
They asked for Aristos Achaion.
Yet the answer continues to be that you aren’t here.
Wonder if that title was even god given, surely you’d be here if the fates didn’t make a fatal miscalculation. Although they would never.
Imagine me being here, wasting away in a corner and you’re just a few rooms over, avoiding me. Somehow I wish that to be true more than my current reality.
Where are you?