Penelope

By Abigail Zajac, 20, Missouri

I stitch my shroud, 

in quiet contemplation 

It is time that I race against, 

leaving rough edges I never hope to finish. 

I promise tomorrow. 

Tomorrow, I will smooth the seams. 

Tomorrow, he will return from sea. 

But the words are as empty as my spool, 

and my hope fades like the sunlight from the window. 

The men outside my door—children really, 

bawdy and brawny, stumbling over each other. 

Eager to win something I have already given up. 

Something that keeps me at this loom, 

unmaking each stitch I so carefully created. 

Something that keeps me in this fading light, 

praying to Hera for one more night.

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This poem is simultaneously inspired by the painting “Seamstress” by Lily Prigioniero (pictured above) and the story of Penelope in the Odyssey. After Odysseus left for Troy, suitors came to Ithaca, his kingdom, and overtook his castle. They wanted to marry his wife, Penelope, figuring that he had died in the war; however, they did not know that she was just as clever as her husband. She promised them that she would choose a suitor once she finished weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus’s father, Laertes. She would weave the shroud by day on her loom and unweave it at night so she never made any progress, hoping she would never have to make a decision and Odysseus would come home.

Twitter: @AbigailZajac