Penelope

Photo by Wei Huang on Unsplash

everyone’s talking about Epic these days and i can feel imagine your smirk laughing that you found it months before anyone ever did in the beginning

then you roll your eyes at me in our old song and dance me saying i want to read the odyssey first before saying anything about pop-culture and virality

everyone thinks of penelope

i find myself wondering why after all odysseus had gone through to go home it was penelope who everyone thought maybe they projected their lack —

and we laugh because after all this we come back to Lacan once again but everyone thinks they’re on some odyssean journey unthinking

is it penelope they want or the idea

that someone’s waiting at the other side of hell is it penelope they’re after or would they have been content with the dog lapping at their feet in worship

i think you know the answer better than anyone i can think of you want not penelope but the triumph of the odyssey of yourself so that finally

when you come home

you are coming home to yourself not the promise of something to come home to — just the sovereignty of carving out a space in this universe

then calling it home — finally a place you can just be like the tattoo you want etched into your spine reclaiming the body you once felt was not yours

you are odysseus and the penelope he comes home to — no less than sovereign