achilles

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Some Men Have Vaginas

He said he was a gay man
with a vagina and I, penis heavy
and light of foot, wondered
if gay meant the same to him
as it did to me, wondered
if man was in mind or body.
Because I wear my man,
strip down bare to my man.
In the mirror, there, I am.
For me, man has merely been
a matter of circumstance,
not a journey or discovery.
I rarely had to fight for it,
rarely want to fight against it,
never wanted to shed skin
to reveal somebody else.
I never questioned it until
he said, "Some men have vaginas."
I understood it to be true
but it left me feeling nothing
more than a tool, who knew
nothing about being a man
outside his own body.”
― Dean Atta, The Black Flamingo

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles