Homeland

This morning plays out like dreams I have after toiling away all day in the house of this unfamiliar family whose floors smell like loneliness and feel like ice and as this morning unfolds the lives of these sheltered poseurs and their young begin to unravel and spool around their feet and as the light bleeds in through the curtains and I feel a sense of wicked destiny. 

A ship pulls into the harbor and it carries foreboding which does not lie and is impossible to disguise and the men who get off of the boat look lean and tattooed and tattered like they carry more dangerous things than slaves chained beneath the deck; a man passes the kitchen’s dirt-caked window as they trudge to Odysseus’ stoop and he looks me in the eye and I will not mistake that glint for a sailor’s toughness as I can pick up on the warning it broadcasts saying that something big bad and dangerous is on its way to this godforsaken island and you have better believe Odysseus will be the first to fall when it gets here. 

Odysseus hosts the sailors out of the goodness of his humble heart and also because he knows better than to spite anyone with a drop of noble blood and he might factor in the flags hanging from their masts because even the king knows that the Spartans do not venture this far often and the sight of a Spartan ship means something of its own, a warning if you’re eagle-eyed like me or an opportunity to hold a feast if you’re shortsighted like the King but either way the palace doors open wide and in they clamber. 

Odysseus insists that they bathe before a feast of he says mythological proportions (but then he takes it back and avoids damnation, to my dismay) and then they all assemble around the oaken tables in Odysseus’ hall which is in reality the picture of rural shabbiness compared to the gilt banquets of Sparta and when the men see this room they must think as I do of the glorious halls of their home and feel a shiver from the cold floor that feels like a trap and a curse but I feel better knowing that when they leave they will leave something that will bring me one step closer to my homeland and soon I will follow after their ship and all will be well. 

This vaunted feast occurs minutes maybe hours later and the men sit and I wait and they talk and every syllable is an electrifying step towards truth and finally it is spoken and three soft sentences sound like the breaking of a chain and the the wind over water and the trumpets of Sparta and then the captain opens his wine-stained mouth and offers forth the ultimate news and tells Odysseus that Helen’s blessed escapades have led her to leave her husband for a Trojan prince and this turn of harmonious events so unfathomable to her husband (my well-armed King) forces Odysseus back into a corner so he must ship off to a bloody war from which he will probably never return and while his face will not appear again within these halls the radiant Helen will return safe to Sparta and will as you may predict need new slaves. 

A house with a deceased master needs not so many attendants and us kitchen maids will be the easiest sell so we too will board one of these trading ships and they will take us in chains back to Sparta to the palace which must once again fill its halls after its sons have died and its daughters have turned against their Queen for her alleged sins and in this approaching scenario I will cry tears of joy as I enter my homeland’s hallowed harbor, and because Odysseus must die so that I can return home I rejoice at the sight of the Spartan ship which carries so many prisoners of war and brings also the roots of such glorious death below its floorboards. 

Miraculous.  

3 main choices: I chose to write this piece in the style of a stream-of-consciousness ramble, with improper and rarely used punctuation and frequent incorporation of discursive  allegorical devices. First, I chose to write this piece in this way to amplify the manic themes displayed in the content itself; because the narrator imagines a dramatic scheme to return home, I wanted to reflect and magnify this intense and passionate mania through unadulterated and spontanious style. Further, I employed several long and complicated similes and metaphors, such as “three soft sentences sound like the breaking of a chain and the the wind over water and the trumpets of Sparta,” to mimic the style of Greek epic poetry and present a dramatic contrast to the subject matter of this piece and classic poetry; Greek literature like The Odyssey, reverently praises kings (especially Odysseus) and barely mentions slaves, and because this piece did the opposite, I chose to mimic the Greeks’ allegorical density. However, the lack of punctuation further compounds this parallel by incorrectly separating these complicated allegorical devices, punctuated cleanly in classic literature, establishing the social status of the slave as someone not granted education, compared to the erudite Greek writers (like Homer) who usually wrote dramatic similes.