Shipping Lanes

Achilles

As he returns from the field, drenched in sweat, his plume ruffled, a shoulder plate broken, it feels like a lifetime ago – the greatest meal he ever had. Breakfast in the old city on Scyros, in the days before he sailed west for Troy: figs, grapes, runny eggs, goat cheese made in the same ancient blue house his father’s father would have visited.

One of those days where it wasn't quite hot enough for sweat to drench his white tunic, the merchant ships were setting out so they could have a sea breeze as they cut through the wine dark sea. Skirmishes between scout ships were beginning in the west. It feels like a lifetime ago they made landfall, a lifetime ago, scars appeared on his legs and arms. 

The shallow scars have healed, the deep ones: jagged, crooked smiles that stared at Patroclus as he stitched them still remain – though Patroclus held no reverence for his kisses and Achilles worshipped his thighs.

Where is the prophecy now?

Hector is dead, Paris is missing, it’s Troilus who hunts him now. 

A green sun sets over Troy, and for a brief second Achilles sees his bedfellow, his brother, his man-wife staring at him from the flap of their tent before he remembers—

That memory sends him frenzied, screaming to the breaker as he strips his armor and swims toward the green flash, toward his mother, wailing for Patroclus, cursing Agamemnon,

praying for an honorable death should Paris be so kind.

Ben

It feels like a lifetime ago, Ben thinks as he walks down Prospect Street watching the shipping lanes in the westward water.

The greatest meal he ever had for under $15. Breakfast in the old city on Scyros. Sweat soaking his white v-neck, focaccia bread, runny eggs, dried tomatoes,orange juice, greek coffee and cheese made in the same blue house that's made it for 3,000 years. Just before everything changed, just before he moved to Berkeley to start over.

He lives for the days he can see the rainbow of the Robin Williams tunnel on a clear sunny day, when he can see the container ships that might have refueled on Scyros as they passed through the Mediterranean on the way to the Golden Gate. 

It feels like a lifetime ago when he first heard Matt Beringer and Kurt Vile play inside that ancient cheese house on that lonely, quiet morning, nursing a vacation not-vacation hangover. The heat makes the scars on his biceps breathe, the heat takes him back to waking up next to her in a hotel room on Scyros.

A Georgian girl he met a week before in Athens, a Georgia girl who liked sex on the beach and flying too close to the sun, who introduced him to Troilus and Cressida.

The night they met he saw an impossible green flash over the Parthenon while she spoke about California boys and broken hearts. 

She held no reverence for his kisses, he could not bring himself to worship her raven hair.

She’s back in Georgia now, he's spent a year with the bone filled campanile, taking acting classes to the monotone hum of the Zellerbach basement. Hours staring at the Dwinelle Hall Athinean reliefs he first saw a lifetime ago with a Georgian girl he hopes has forgotten him,

A Georgian girl who changed his life on the island where Achilles spent his last days of childhood. Before Iphigenia, before Troy, before Paris' arrow, before Patroclus: 

Dancing with princesses, watching the ships and beating the heat.