The First Rule

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.

And after a few steps, it sucked him in.
But there at the other side he found
Everything—the streets, the houses—

A mirror-image of what he 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 stays beneath
The tongue, like childhood’s
Language, which we can never unspeak.

—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).

Well, some of us are here only because
We can’t go back, or were compelled to leave,
By things that now keep hounding us.

—You know, I think I don’t belong here.

—That’s why you were invited:

To take the tour, to see what we’ve become
And tell the folks back home
How much we’ve remained the same:

Because only our children have become
What we’ve always wanted to be
When we left: They are no longer us.

—Well, so long… How strange
Having to go and feel as if
I never really left.

—Thanks for the visit. You can find
Your way where the light fades,
Or the night ends (as if you never left).

The first rule is also the last