Odyssey’s Wings

Odysseus kept a map with one word written in the centre: HOME. Each time he crossed a sea, the word shifted to another corner. One night, a white horse rose from the water with butterfly wings and asked, ‘Are you looking for a place, or for the person you were before you left?’ Odysseus had no answer, so they flew.

Below them lay every island where he had changed himself to be accepted, rescued or loved. At dawn he erased the word from the map. The horse carried him back to the same shore, yet it no longer felt the same.

Home had not moved. The traveller had finally returned without abandoning himself.