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Briseis' Nostoi
Come, all you muses and bards
With broken lyres and cut strings
Hear what has become of your
Vengeful, cruel hero
Pulled from the mud
of my sweetest Lyrnessus
by the charred fingertips
Of Greece's fiercest fighter
In the heat of the sun
With no Gods or prophecies to guide me
Biding my time like a blushing bride
With a husband holding only selfish interest
Freedom is a right like a sword
Wielded only by those born into unknown corners
Unfounded by our merciless Olympic legends
Our spars years gone from their minds
After the arrow is shot, city burned, women returned
I stand as a mere object
Praying my child will forget my face
So I may greet my father before dark
Sinking, singing, singeing
The last dream that may remain
It would be kinder to drown in darkness
Then to attend eternal paradise on his arm
Was he sweeter to my family
In their swift, soft slaughter
Then to me, remembered by history
As nothing more than his
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This piece is about the character Briseis from The Iliad. She was Achilles' slave bride. I wrote this to highlight the cruelty faced by women and girls in history and literature.