Ghost Reader

An Ekphrastic Sonnet

By D. J. ReddallPublished 2 years ago • 1 min read

Albert Bartolomé, "The Artist’s Wife Reading," 1883

Represent your elegant, dying wife

Leaving her traitorous body behind

Temporarily, for another life

Thanks to a novel, legible but blind

How did you feel, watching her read and die?

Is that what is really depicted here?

Were brush and pigment your means to defy

Disease, disintegration, loss and fear?

How casually we talk about love

Could it be the will to embarrass death?

Perhaps the novel, the power thereof

Is the key, for she breathed her final breath

Long ago, but like the protagonist

Of the tale, she continues to exist

I write because my time is limited and my imagination is not.

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