The Spectral Window

I don’t believe in ghosts,
but once when I was just fifteen
I walked into an empty room
inside my mother’s flat,
a room that was large and empty
and filled with odds and ends,
an old round table here,
a clothes horse there…

and through the curtainless window
the moonlight shone and started me.

So it was nothing much at all,
but in that moment I did not
believe in ghosts and yet
was scared of them.