oh to be a young, beautiful boy walking barefoot and carefree as his hair is softly blown by the fresh winds of north under the bright sun, in his way to his secret encounter with his lover, a lovely boy with dazzling eyes, in the mesmerizing and far away lands of ancient greece
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
[image description: a two panel, black and white illustration in ink and pencil, with strips of text on a white background edited digitally onto it, so it looks collaged. the first panel shows a man with short, dark, curly hair and a beard in a breastplate. his face is in profile and he looks slightly melancholy. the panel is captioned, “in the story of patroclus.”
the panel below shows another man, this one with slightly longer, pale hair. he also wears a breastplate and, although facing forward, looks moodily to the side. the panel is captioned, “no one survives, not even achilles / who was nearly a god. / patroclus resembled him; they wore / the same armor.”]
