Athena concealing Ithaca from Ulysses Elliot Mills My days are numbered, my life has a number. I am nothing, and so the first number I am given is a zero, then I am told that the numbers go on, but I no longer care enough to take note of what they might mean. They are written on a ticket, a hollow assurance that you will answer me, a reminder that you have not answered me. That feeling of separation still cuts through me to this very day, and I cannot but inexorably recall that I have been left alone. Knowing that I will never be able to hear the voice which vowed to serve as my soul’s guardian, and knowing, in turn, that my voice too will never be heard‌it is nearly enough to make me give up, though giving up would be the same as continuing to try, each response leading to an equal outcome, promising no response. I exist as a shadow, watching you leave, watching you turn away slowly and head off into the distance, like the bow of a great ship, cutting a track through the mists of the sea, on a journey which we all silently and fearfully know does not have a return route. And so it has been for forty-five years, with the passing of each day since I called for you a fresh reminder that my speech still hangs in the air, taking a part of me with it, never to reappear and never to find its way to the solid earth. Within the days, there are foolish moments, seconds perhaps, where the hope of hearing a voice in the distance develops into a delusional certainty that my sense of abandonment will finally be lifted. But then the force of reality once more strikes me, breaking through those pointless imaginings, leaving me in my perpetual state of solitude again. The words that left me were formed in order that they may be heard, but the knowledge that they will never
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