I watched him take wood from trees and
Build a raft with his own hands,
Tying them together with leather so they would hold in the violent seas
On the long journey to come.
Scraping away for days on end after he received the news.

2520 days ago he was pulled
From Poseidon’s wrath
On to Ogygia’s shores.
He seemed content to stay.
We burned with passion.
He began to forget about the outside world
With its monsters and its wars.
His time at Troy began to grow dim
But recollections of his wife and child grew dimmer,
Like a light in a dying person’s eyes,
Until he learned of the time that had passed

7 years in a blink of an eye.
He asked to leave.
I had to refuse him.
Ogygia was his home.
Why would he choose the transparent mortal woman
Over me,
The immortal goddess
Daughter of Atlas,
The man who held up the whole world
All of Odysseus’s world and everything he knew?
How could he turn down my eternal beauty and
An immortal life for himself?
It wasn’t until the winged god
Hermes
Came to me,
His mouth singing poetry and his sandals glistening like sunlight on a shell.
His message was clear as his poetry:
Release Odysseus.
Athena is with him.
She wants him to be home.
He is needed there.

I was forced to watch my almost immortal husband
Build a raft and float back to his
Ithaca.
Athena frowns upon me, jealous of my beauty
I am forced to linger here
enduring the thought that I had come so close to having someone loving me.