The Lost Promises of Xanadu By Mollie McKenzie
When I was a child, my father would whisper words of love to my mother, but when she asked him to stay, he said no. I cried but she dried my tears, telling me that girls were better without men. I buried my face next to my smiling doll. Her golden hair filled my mouth and made me gasp for air. I pictured my father searching for gold in Xanadu, where he said the sun shined all day long, Oh Xanadu, where mothers give their children chocolate kisses of love daily, where a chorus of sweet and silvery voices made songs all day-long, where trees and rivers know the thoughts of mankind, where beasts of the earth smile like humans and where no fathers leave behind their little girls.
In school, short skirts and thick makeup was worn by girls who thought they could sell their bodies in exchange for a Xanadu romance. They hid my golden heart necklace, but a smiling boy found it and placed it around my neck and loved me. We sat at the lunch table, holding hands but I knew when he looked back at the short skirts that it was over and it made
me think of that Land. Xanadu, where no one made promises they couldn’t keep, where other girls never laughed at you for not wearing makeup, where no fathers left their daughter alone at the Valentines Dance. In Xanadu, where vain words and actions of love weren’t merely used as excuses. But I had to smile
because this Land was worlds away. I smiled when a man knelt down on one knee in the mud even though the rain made both of us shiver with cold. My mother gave me away, my father’s love and empty promises are only ghosts belonging to a young girl. The man at the aisle’s end doesn’t belong to Xanadu. He doesn’t need to make promises because I know
that his hands will always be there to hold mine. No thoughtless desires, where fantasy destroys reality, and where smiles mask tears, can distract me. Once upon a time there was a place called Xanadu, where dreams tempted the hopeless and helpless, where people made golden shrines to its gods, where young girls and women believe in a thing they called love. But I said no, and I accepted his scars and he mine. I made my decision smiling, with joy not many girls know. I can turn away from Xanadu and its whispered words of love.