another one in the Odysseus series

Differences between Achilles and myself

2

It is said Achilles screamed like a stuck pig

that moment the arrow went in

but I was there and can attest to no such thing.

He stopped in midstride, his eyes

looked down to where the arrow jutted,

like a lizard’s  elongated tongue,

from out of his ankle — that ankle his mother held

So many years ago and yet surely not enough —

then he looked at me and I swear

by the memory of my own mother’s arms around me

he simply gave a weary shrug before he fell

both in body and in spirit;

a death so beyond me

that I know I might travel a million million battlefields
and never see its like again