In The Asylum Poem by Sheena Blackhall

A Poem inspired by the titles of the Tales by Guy de Maupassant

You’ll see them abandoned in back wards
It may be hinted they’re off on a country excursion
Not part of a humble drama
A family’s secret

Insanity may come as a coup d'etat
A cremation of memories and selves

Patients flit like ghosts along the corridors
For madness is the mother of monsters

Confessions, recollections
May be sparked by a quiet whisper
The whimsy of a shadow on the wall

They are all at sea,
Circling the ward like the drowned
Who remain unburied
Released, they account for suicides
Beggars, drifters, swamped by the currents
Of living in the world

What is sanity?
How long is a piece of string?