watching the moon with mom

in the asylum
when the dark room grew close,
hallucinating and confined,
the legend of your ghost
out of the corner of my eye
like a vivid memory floating in air
revisiting a childhood
near my little town square,
came playing into my mind.
a ball bouncing against the far wall,
catching a cold,
letting it fall,
trying to pick it up again,
seemed uninterested in the evening news.
dressing for the circus like a clown
in amusement park shoes,
and passionately shopping for toys,
swimming near the bank of a secret river
with other naive girls and boys
watching the moon,
my paddle like arms suffer as i stroke,
preferring the water's current
to the familiar joke:
your faint smile and strange eyes
falling from the sky like luminous pride
light up my solitary cell
many years before i died.
had you loved me then, i might not have cried.