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Ulysses stood,

On his own doorstep,

Watching a strange boy play in his own living room,

A woman from the depths of his memory cook in his kitchen.

How long had it been,

Since he had

Shouldered his pack,

Kissed Penelope,

And left for basic training?

Decades, it seemed,

With nothing but battle,

Quarrels among generals,

And Death.

Frightening, thieving Death,

As his constant companion

He still heard the cries of his comrades

Dying against the trenches of the enemy

Who stole the prize

Helen

That weapon of ingenuity all nations lusted for

Named for the beauty it shed when it lit the sky

With magnificent, radioactive light

Helen, the weapon to destroy the world.

It had already destroyed Ulysses's world.

He remembered his leader,

Captain Agammemnon

Killed by his own wife,

Who was a traitor to the enemy

He remembered his comrade Achilles

The sniper.

The one who made the enemy

Quake in their bunkers.

Slain, ultimately,

From a boy soldier's shot to the foot.

Blood poisoning in the heel.

As for himself,

Ulysses was alive, was he not?

He had lain half-dead

These many months

When the plane taking him home

Crashed on the island of

A fair woman, a hermitess.

All through his illness Ulysses thought

Of this day

Coming home

To beautiful Penelope

And...his son.

It must be his son.

He realized the years had passed

As the door opened

And he fell into the arms of his wife.

Years of war.

Years of anger and quarreling among comrades.

Years of Death.

But Ulysses lived.

And he knew he would continue to live

And remember

The War for Helen.