​Odysseus and Ithaca, by Emily Zogbi

Athena Appearing To Odysseus To Reveal The Island Of Ithaca Giuseppe Bottani (Italy) before 1784

​Odysseus and Ithaca 
 
I am only as good as my word 
which is a bond, I’ve been told, keeping us 
here, you and me, tethered together 
like Odysseus and Ithaca.
 
Let me take the long way 
to my point — it was never the wife 
he hoped to find again, but the home 
that raised him, its familiar corners 
from which he sailed long before. 
 
He was a different man 
when he touched those shores again, 
and this was a different beach, 
with different rocks which over decades
had been emulsified into something
smaller and more pliable. 
 
He swears there was a reason he didn’t return 
sooner — he lists the obstacles, promises 
their credibility, but it won’t change 
that home is different now 
 
and always would be. 
From the second you left 
 
it would never be the same 
whether you came back in two years 
or twenty, 
 
which is all to say — you cannot keep it, the moment
already passed and become memory, 
muddled with time like a story 
 
told a million ways. Tell me the long way, 
the one that takes a while to arrive 
and I’ll consider the following: 
there was never a before to go back to

Emily Zogbi

Emily Zogbi is a writer and poet from Long Island.