The Portrait's Secret

By Reagan Ralph

A woman’s portrait leans out her pocket.

No frame protecting its edges.

The woman’s face afflicted,

the portrait’s face contemplative.

The Ferryman approaches shore.

She steps anxiously aboard,

unsettled by the water.

The portrait met his glance.

Feeling it gaze back.

The Ferryman looked away first.

“Is that your photo?”

Caught off guard, the woman replies,

“Yes, she was my friend.”

A forlorn expression with every word.

A cold impression on his shoulder,

compels the Ferryman to look behind.

The portrait’s face firmer and determined.

“Did she mean a lot to you?”

“She did, only this picture knows her pain”

She stared at the river.

Its depths obscured under each wave.

A place unknowable to her,

yet urging to know its secrets.

The deeper she looked,

the less she understood.

Staring suddenly back at the picture,

she takes it out of her pocket.

A sombre darkness shadows her face.

“What pain does she know?”

“The portrait, it remembers.”

The woman replies dejected.

A tear falling on the portrait’s surface.

A gust sweeps the picture from her grasp.

Over the boat, into the river.

Overwhelmed with panic she screams.

The Ferryman glances at the floating portrait.

Its face so resolute, the water could not soften it.

The woman starts frantically grasping,

leaning overboard, hands barely touching it.

“Why should you bear another’s secret? One unknowable to you”

“Because someone other than her needs to know”

“Why must it be you?”

A wave crashes into her unexpectedly.

Driving her backwards in fear.

Hesitant for too long, looking over.

The portrait vanishes from the waves.

“How can I keep her secret alive”

“It died before you ever owned it”

The Ferryman’s reply sparks reflection.

Relief touched her once-weary face.

With this relief met also anguish.

She steps off the boat.

Her silhouette fades in a frame.

The Ferryman rows his oars once more.

Constantly meeting the river’s tensions.

A wave carries a familiar image.

The expression different but unmistakable.

Her face looked softened unlike last time

The portrait’s secret spoken in silence.

The Ferryman places it into his box.

Reflection

This poem emerged from a question that has shaped much of my recent philosophical writing: Who has the right to carry another person's suffering?

The question belongs to a broader theme within my philosophy: preservation without ownership. The woman believes she can preserve something that belongs to her friend through the portrait. The ferryman softly challenges this assumption. Not because memory is wrong, but because there are parts of another person that were never truly ours to possess.

Another theme in my writing is the idea of release as an ethical practise. The ferryman knows she must release the portrait, yet he does not force it. instead, he accompanies her through it. The woman does not choose release; nature does. The Ferryman simple refuses to violate this process.

The poem also explores memory and grief. The portrait is lost, yet memory continues. Nothing is annihilated. Continuity remains essential to grief. Although death is present throughout the poem, the deepest departure is not death itself, but the illusion that we can carry everything another person was.

Finally, the poem reflects on the limits of our understanding. We can never truly know another person's suffering. The Ferryman never claims to. What he offers instead is accompaniment through the thresholds of grief, allowing our relationship to suffering to change without pretending it can be fully understood.

I would like to leave you with one final question: How do we love someone without claiming what was never ours to possess?