Penelope

Distressed, alone, and confused. Where shall she go?

Penelope. 

   That's all they said. The name lived on their tongue, their lips her doorway.

Penelope.

That's all she wrote. And would ever write. Two wrongs make no right. Or do they?

"Penelope; what a brilliant name for such a brilliant little creature." Mrs. Dockins peered inside the small bassinet, a writhing being moving underneath heaps of blankets.

   "It is indeed Mother." Maryann, still swollen from childbirth, collapsed into the rocking chair next to the swaying bassinet. "Mother?"

   Still peering into the bassinet, Mrs. Dockins answered, "Yes, Maryann?" 

   "What are the ways of life, so that I may teach her?"

    Mrs. Dockins tilted her head, in obvious thought. "The ways of life are whatever you make them out to be. Whether they be happy thoughts or sad thoughts, whether good or bad thoughts; what happens here"--a quick tap to Maryann's head--"determines what life looks like to you. And what life will look like to her as well." She stared into the bassinet once more.

Twenty years later, Penelope does not know that life is good. Stumbling drunkenly into an alleyway, she'll never know the blessings that await every human being. Selling her most precious possession for the well-being of herself and for the entertainment of others, she'll never know that the grass is green on the other side. All that she will know is the dead field in where she lies; how it spreads out like an ocean, never to turn green again.

It's dead. And so is her heart.

Penelope was all they said, as they tried to fix her, build her up, all over again.

Penelope was all she wrote, letter after letter, with a mother's sorrow behind every pen stroke.

Penelope. Gone.