PART I: ANGER 

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The empty space you left in our bed is too large. Larger than life. Larger than you. It consumes me. Had I the luxury of sleeping in it just one more time, I would be swallowed up by the empty air to my right. 

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This space did not hold just you. It is too vast even for your eternal height, your intense greatness. No, I’m afraid there was something else that laid in our bed with us, that pressed against my back as you wrapped me in your arms, that trickled down my thigh as you stared into my eyes from between my legs. 

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Your ego, your desire for greatness, loomed over us in every moment, and I’m afraid to say I became desensitized to its hulking presence. 

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I wish I could see you one last time, alive and laughing behind your helmet, if only to kill you myself. How like a man to have seen visions of your own death, the same dreams that possessed me the night you stumbled home and retired to bed long before I did, exhausted, and still insist on fighting. 

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I tried to compromise with you. I knew your mind like I knew your body, and I knew I could not persuade you to stay off the battlefield. But a reasonable man would have heeded my desperate word and stayed close to the walls. But no, you would rather die a lionhearted hero than look like a coward in front of the many men you commanded. 

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Part of me wonders if you valued their word, their adoration, their approval, over that of your wife. 

 

Over that of your Andromache. 

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PART II: REGRET 

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Did you see me when I kept turning back to drink you in one last time, my final meal on death row? Did you see the tears that flowed down my cheeks, the ones you kissed a million times and would never kiss again? Did you hear the sobs that wracked my body, that never stopped even when I sat and wove with red string to distract myself from your absence, just hours before Atropos snipped your own yard? 

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I’m sorry I shouted at you. It’s just my nature. I’m sorry I didn’t pray harder, or more often. If I had, maybe you would still be here. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to stop you, and I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to make you stay. 

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Oh, my Hector, I’m so sorry.

I’m sorry. 

I’m sorry. 

I’m sorry. 

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PART III: MOTHERHOOD 

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My darling Scamandrius, it breaks my heart to say your soul will never see your father’s, no matter where you roam below ground. When I look upon his helmet, I can still hear your shrieks and cries, because the sight of it scared you so. You were right to be afraid. 

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I was not allowed a proper farewell, and I am so sorry I do not have one now, but I do not think I ever will. It should not be a mother’s responsibility to mourn her child, and though saying goodbye has become a second language to me, I don’t think I will ever find the right words to say it to you. All I can offer is a tearful, “I will love you until my memories turn to asphodel,” and a “thank you” to the gods for sparing you from the suffering I endure each day. 

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PART IV: VENGEANCE 

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Odysseus, 

I know you are a father, and I hope someday your heart is mutilated by the sheer agony of learning you will outlive your own son. 

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Did he cry when you ordered him to be slaughtered? I hope he did, because I hope it rings in your ears for all eternity, and I hope you are not too cold and unfeeling to suffer. 

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And I hope when they praise your name for centuries to come, I hope the word stings their throats and causes their tongues to bleed as they wail mine instead. 

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Neoptolemus, 

I hope my insides grow teeth. 

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I hope your limp member comes out bloody and full of shards of glass each time you press me to your bed, in that same spot where your wife often lies. 

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I hope the sight of my face, of my nose and my eyes, reminds you of the boy you killed before he even said his first word. I hope his screams and cries echo around your empty skull. I hope it drives you mad. 

 

Achilles,

I hope the death of your loverboy destroyed you beyond all repair. I hope my husband ripped out whatever fossilized thing sits in your chest in place of a beating heart and smashed it on the ground in front of you. And I hope your hands bled when you tried to clean it up. 

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I hope when you sleep at night, alone, or beside whatever poor maiden who has to suffer a similar fate to mine, you are kept up by the sound of my Hector’s body dragging behind you, haunted by the smell of flesh and dirt, the scrape of his bones against stone. I hope when great heroes, men as great as my beloved, the kind of men you will never be, look upon you, they see the scarlet trail you leave in your wake, a trail made from the blood you spilled–not just from Hector, but from my father and brothers–and shun you for what you have done. 

 

Only the gods know the things I would do for a chance to rip you to shreds with my bare hands, bury your skin and blood under my nails, deaf to the sound of your frantic pleas, the final prayers of a god-loving man with a sacrilegious ego, and feast on your corpse. 

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PART V: PROPHECY 

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They will forget me. 

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They will forget the part I played in favor of the man I still love, the child I still adore, the family I will never forget, and the many men I despise, but will never have the privilege of seeing breathe their final breath. Of being the reason the light leaves their eyes. 

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They will all forget me, but I am a survivor; I will never have the privilege of forgetting.