And maybe there is something about it, to be loved by a god. To be Patroclus, to be loved, to be love itself. To be an altar to life, held up by the golden hands of a god—to be held by a god at all.
Seven rounds across the city, can you hear the cries of Achilles? Can you hear him, Zeus and Hades, damned lords of wind and earth, can you hear him scream? The greatest grief of them all, to stand alone. To never feel the sweetness of reunion in his arms, can you hear him wail? Sing oh muse, sing oh goddess, not of the rage nor the blood, sing of the cave on the mountain. Sing of golden hair between willowy fingers.
Sing, oh goddess, of the man he loved. It has to mean something. It has to have mattered. If love is not worth the song, nothing will be. He has no fatal heel, only a pure heart bared to the world in all its fragility. Only the spear, only the fall. Sing, oh muse, of Patroclus