The asylum is the biggest building;
we called it the spider because from above,
its wings looked like legs with a body at the centre.
The windows are framed by metal grating,
and crosses mark each of them in the middle.
Now it is no longer an asylum.
It's marked as private property,
yet trails surround it in the fields of tall grass and the woods behind.
In the morning, runners sweep past it in a dreary march,
and in the evening, kids bike past in a race against the sun.
Sometimes they get off their bikes and peer into the windows on the ground floor,
plaster their faces against the metal grating,
see the peeling wallpaper and the over-turned tables,
but mostly the empty rooms and the view across to the next window.
Inherently they look through the building, onto the other side where a window, parallel to the one they are looking in, transports them to the other side of the walls.
On the second floor, there is a broken window,
forced from the inside since glass covers the lawn and pavement.
Maybe it is tragic,
all the people from the north side of this land shipped up here and trapped,
some of them sterilized,
confined to a labyrinth.
Now the building sits empty and deranged,
locked up from the outside world,
not for any purpose anymore except to sit there,
expired.
Now ghosts haunt the grounds, supposedly. But it is tragic.