I felt more like a confidant than lover,

but gradually I understood the motive—

even she needed someone to impress.

Life was a contest. Mara was a champion.

What good was winning if no one noticed?

Of course, that night we drank too much and argued.

She strode off, slamming doors theatrically.

I sat still, slowly finishing my drink,

feigning indifference—just as she would have—

and then went to the other wing to sleep.

Let her find me, I thought. Let her apologize.

She won’t like sleeping in this house alone.

The room was cold, and I was too annoyed

to fall asleep. I stretched out on the bed,

still wearing all my clothes, and tried to read.

Believe it or not, the book was Shakespeare’s sonnets.

What sweeter text for wounded vanity?

Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing.

I’d found an old edition in the library,

and from sheer spitefulness I’d stolen it.

That night each poem seemed written just for me.

What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

I hope this explanation makes it clear

I wasn’t sleeping when I saw her enter—

Mara, I thought, mad at being ignored,

coming to make a scene. But, no, it was

a handsome woman in her early forties.

I thought she might have been a housekeeper

come in from town to check up on the place,

but why was she so elegantly dressed?

I started to explain why I was there.

She didn’t seem to hear and turned away.

Could she be deaf? I didn’t want to scare her.

Something was wrong. I couldn’t see her clearly.

She seemed at once herself and her own reflection

shimmering on the surface of clear water

where fleeting shadows twisted in the depths.

I found it hard admitting what I saw.

She seemed to be a ghost, though that sounds crazy.

Oddly, I wasn’t scared—just full of wonder,

watching this thing I knew could not exist,

this woman standing by her dressing table,

translucent, insubstantial, but still there,

and utterly oblivious of me.

First to be haunted, then to be ignored!

Her back toward me, she started to undress.

Now I was panicked and embarrassed both.

I spoke much louder. She made no response.

Now wearing only a long silk chemise,

she turned toward me, still strangely indistinct,

the fabric undulating, as if alive.

I felt her eyes appraise me, and I sat

half paralyzed as she approached the bed.

Here I was face to face with a dead soul,

some entity regathered from the dust,

returned like Lazarus from the silent tomb,

whose mere existence, right before my eyes,

confounded my belief there could not be

an afterlife. Think what this meeting represented—

a skeptic witnessing the unexplained.

I could have learned the secrets of the dead

if there are any secrets, which I doubt.