Arrow Rock Literary Journal

Helen stands at her balcony, watching the Greek army slaughter the Trojans within their own streets.

It didn’t scare her, when the gates opened and the invaders poured in.

They weren’t invaders to her, after all.

Behind her, Deiphobus’s body cooled, sprawled over their marriage bed, sheets stained red.

People forget.

They forget that she is a Spartan, after all, and a queen at that.

Years before, men gathered at their Spartan walls, vying for her hand.

In vain it was, she thinks as she picks out a familiar form fighting towards her prison.

Menelaus.

Her husband.

The man with the kind eyes and broad shoulders, a second son, a boy from Mycenae.

The man who fought for her these ten long years with his helmet of bronze and his spear lightning fast.

Her husband.

And years before that, she ran the woods outside her Spartan home.

Castor, Pollux, her brothers now deep in the ground.

Clytemnestra, her sweet sister, married to her brother in law.

Agamemnon rages beside Menelaus.

Twice kidnapped, twice married, and thrice cursed, Helen of Sparta, or Helen of Troy.

Adulteress.

Killer.

Victim.

But years before that, she thinks, as she walks back past Deiphobus, a hair comb in his throat.

A swan came to Leda, and Helen, herself hatched from an egg.

Before she was unwillingly a Trojan, before even she was a Spartan, Helen was a divine being.

Do they know that the blood that stains her thighs, fought over by armies and kings, is part ichor.

She smiles as she hears the screams of Troy.

Her laugh is filled with mirth when she meets eyes with her husband after ten long years.

She is half god, and she cannot help her cursed beauty.

But he is all man, and to be all man, is to be all devotion.

Menelaus, who never sought to own her

Menelaus, who fought ten long years to return her to her home.

Let Helen not be remembered as a prisoner, as a Trojan.

She walks the halls of her palace, holding dominion in her home again.

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Adeline Myers is a sophomore at Lindenwood University. She is a Fashion Design major, and in addition to sewing and fashion, she has a deep love for classic literature and creative writing. She likes to highlight the roles of women in history and tell their stories that may have gone untold.