Welcome Home

I understand:

for years, perhaps, you have lived

underground. Handling only

darkness, you have not become

accustomed to it. You want to get out.

One day you find an object which

may be a chair; at any rate,

a surface. Standing on

this dark thing, you reach up.

Here at the top the smell

is oppressive, sweet. You almost

fall. But you push, and the top begins

to crack. Plaster, or something, falls

around you. Emerging, you know

the smell: cake. Noise, lights:

you are outside, standing giddily on the top,

swathed in ribbons. And there

are all your friends,

dressed up, half drunk. The applause

is enormous. It is a party

for you. One of the crowd, the drunkest

and happiest, shrilling through a megaphone

“Welcome home,”

is me.

-- Everette Maddox

From The Paris Review no. 58 (Summer 1974)