3. Feet on Broken Glass

457 10 1
                                    


Patroclus was not a mystery to me. 

He wasn't unlike the other boys. He rejoiced at the thought of relaxation and kissed the edges of hedonism. His knees were just as knobbly, his silhouette the average build of muscly thin, though his posture was poor and his voice rang deeper than expected.

For a while, Patroclus, to me, was insignificant.

Yet his eyes are hollow and dark like spiderwebs. He walks around almost painfully, as if his feet were pricked with broken glass. He holds secrets, and too many of them. They gnaw at him and his face becomes gaunt with their torment. His every waking moment is dedicated to keeping them to himself, and his eyes never clear - they remain their same obscurity, unwelcoming and dangerous.

His past, though it was yet to be revealed to me, was clearly twisted and tinged with madness and death.

I am frustrated at him for behaving this way. Had I not kept an eye out for him following our dinner encounter, I could have lived the rest of my days in the palace without feeling this incessant bite at my chest.

I am born half-god. As part of me grounds me in humanity, the other part fixates on it: my heart, constantly in search for something to satisfy its boundless curiosity, made Patroclus its prey.

It hurts with each passing day to see him keep his skeletons to himself. I wish to shake him. I wish to call upon thunderous claps of lightning to retrieve from him his guarding secrecy. I wish, sometimes, to scream.

Consequence stops me in my tracks though, and every morning as he leaves the dining hall, my hungry heart wishes to follow him, but my feet get stuck among the maze of boys as he departs from my view.

And at night, when the frogs caw and the birds croak to no end, I stay up restless, thinking to myself, "What are you, Patroclus?"


Olives - Achilles x PatroclusWhere stories live. Discover now