fallen verses

The early years were not spent in darkness, but a hazy in-between:
not sight, but the absence of anything to see.
Stumbling, I found the edge of the mist. Before me stretched a grey and featureless plain where colors blended into sky and ground.

Like a fey spirit you appeared before me, showed me a hidden path, and revealed a paradise - an Oz without the munchkins.
In vivid Technicolor you showed me golden walls, a golden gate, a golden lock.
You revealed yourself as the key, the lock, the gate and the world beyond.

I lived in Xanadu!
Every sight was a wonder of you.
Every taste was of your flesh.
Perhaps Kublai Khan did build it in ages past, but you, my love, inherited his kingdom.
You ruled with a velvet fist: that even the most brutal of cuts felt like a caress.

But you proved a fickle spirit and took Xanadu and it’s golden walls and left me.
Without you, the world revealed its true color: grey.
The flat and featureless terrain stretches to the limits of my vision.
I stand where once you opened a world of pleasure:
I look out and understand the plain isn’t empty:
It is inhabited by spirits who have chosen to forget there was once a golden pleasure-dome.
In their forgetfulness there is a peace, an oblivion - one which bears too high a cost:
For I once lived in Xanadu, with you
and even the memory is worth the pain it costs to hold.