A show, set in the past,
to remind us of what we used to be.
The lights go down
and come back up somewhere else,
and we go willingly,
ignoring all the coughs and mutters and phones
and everything else tugging us back
to the world we were in just a moment ago.

The lights go down
and come back up where we started,
and we stand up, file out and say
“Thank God we’re not like that anymore,”
as we return to our real world.

In all of this, not once do we stop
to consider the idea 
that we never left our world 
in the first place.