Anticleia

She did not die from illness. She died from waiting. Day by day the not-knowing wore through her until one morning she did not wake. He finds her in the Underworld among the press of shades, bent with an age and a sadness she did not have when he left. She cannot see him until she drinks the blood. When she does, she touches his face with hands he can barely feel, like being touched by a breath. She tells him about home. About Penelope holding the household together. About Telemachus growing without him. About Laertes sleeping in dirt. He reaches for her and his arms close on nothing. He howls and grabs again and again. There is no one there to hold. The fire takes the flesh, she tells him, and what is left is this. Go back to the living. Go home. He does not let her go. Still she leaves.