The first rule is you don’t come back.

 

At first he couldn’t make it out.

Where the light from the streetlamps faded,

It looked like the mouth of a labyrinth.

 

After a few steps, it sucked him in.

But at the other side he found

Everything—the streets, the houses—

 

A mirror-image of what he had left,

Except all was bathed in sinister light:

The familiar pretending to be strange.

 

—So are you happy here?

 

—In the sense that we’ve always

Wanted to be here, yes. But in the sense

That we had to leave everything behind…

 

We can never shed what we were.

Or what we left behind. It lives beneath

The skin, like love. We can never

 

Shake it off.  It lives beneath

The tongue. Like childhood’s language.

We can never unspeak it.

 

—But you have fixed this place

To look and feel like what you left…

 

—Which keeps us from becoming

What we want (the reason why we left).

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