Odyssey (Continued)

by Veronica Schanoes

7) Hades 3 I saw your face

"I see here the ghost
Of my dead mother, sitting in silence
Beside the blood, and she cannot bring herself
To look her son in the eye or speak to him.
How can she recognize me for who I am?"

11.139—143

"I saw your face

but I did not know who you were."

She begins crying,

until she forgets why—

Boy, why are you crying?

Soap will not stick; she needs needle and thread

and I am no seamstress and Wendy is dead

so her shadow slips easily away.

"She treats me like a dog. She put me here and

she never comes, not once. Why doesn't she visit?"

She loved you

and she died. She died in March.

Do you remember?

She looks at me calmly.

I made those plants, she tells me,

and describes cutting white leaves

"When you came in I saw your face

but I didn't know who you were."

I fell, she tells me. I fell and broke my finger—

see how it won't bend? It healed wrong.

My grandmother was pressing olives

see how badly it's healed?

"Please take me home."

I can't, I tell her.

I know, she says. It's easy,

just take me down on the elevator

and then we go home,

but it's not so easy, so you can't.

"When you came in, I saw your face,

but I didn't know who you were."

She cries as I leave, hugs me tight,

tells people I'm her daughter.

"Don't forget about me here."

The corridor is lined with vacant bodies,

but gone, already gone and soon to be gone.

Nurses ask if I'm her daughter—

They ask who I am.

"I saw your face but I did not know you."

I tell them.

She showed me how

to make stuffed cabbage

and mushroom barley soup

and I have already forgotten.

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