Achilles

I wanted the world.

The fame, the glory, the respect.

Kleos, arete, time.

Other men would fall at my feet in awe of me.

My name spoken throughout the world;

Acclaimed before the masses as a defender, a true hero,

Or whispered with a shiver of delicious fear by my enemies.

Immortality.

That’s what it’s all about.

If you’re never forgotten…

Well, then you can live forever.

I travelled the world for it.

I gave ten years of blood and sweat,

Thousands of bronze-tipped spears.

And I took lives by the hundred even as I felt my own death draw closer.

Now I wander the Underworld, the gardens of Hades.

I can hear my name, spoken again and again by the living,

And that gives me joy.

But the sun is gone.

Why kill for the right to die?

They say that I shouldn’t have gone;

I should have stayed back and raised a family instead.

And where’s the living in that?

I’d be dead by now, anyway.

Everyone dies in the end,

Whether you remember them or not.

But the people who lived in life,

We survive in death.