A Dandelion With a Heart of Rose

By Pragati Agrawal

The sky took on a cooler hue, the warmth began to fade,

And silence started its low, palpitating parade.

The only being by the seashore stood still and small

A solitary dandelion, defying it all.

A heart of rose, dainty beneath a lion’s mane,

A bloom of courage, trembling in pain.

Her eyes spoke in echoes of every route,

Revealed the sincerity that words never could.

Annihilated from within,

She felt herself disintegrating

Like faith collapsing, tattering thin.

Tired of proving her sanctity on obliterated ground,

She longed for the reverberation of a new sound.

Her petals bore the burn of scars,

From all the times she’d reached for stars.

She came to this place unmoored, unpinned,

Chasing a future she’d never comprehend.

But here, within these walls, a different story took hold,

A testament, a legacy, precious as rose gold,

A tale of beauty, bought and sold.

Now she is a model face,

Around her, paparazzi race.

Around her every zephyr is watched, recorded, praised,

Her worth, once forgotten, on a public altar raised.

They call her immaculately divine,

Her smile rehearsed, her tears by design.

Every camera flash became a lightning strike,

Her whisper tempered, her movement alike.

Billboards gleam with her ephemeral grace,

But none saw the ruptures on her face.

Her laughter resonating, brittle, thin

A faint acclaim that seeps within.

She dines with nobles, yet sleeps alone,

Her heart a cathedral of love turned stone.

Each trophy glossed, each diamond cut cold,

A kingdom infinite, but her soul unsold.

In the mirrors lined with deceptive hue,

She searches for the girl she once knew.

And in the glimmer of her painted eyes,

She sees the phantom of her own disguise.

The prestige she wore began to fray,

A gilded crown that led astray.

Her laughter echoed through bustlin’ halls,

Yet none could hear the pulse that compels.

She missed the warmth of hands once near,

The voices dissipated, the love sincere.

Her heart, though embraced by golden thread,

Still mourned the blood of all long dead.

Each smile she exhibited was half a ghost,

Each cheer a shadow of what she’d lost.

And so, one dusk, when the cameras slept,

She walked away, no one wept.

The city twilight fell far behind,

The sea ahead, tranquility for her to find.

The breeze revised her mother’s song,

The waves quivered, “You’ve been brave so long.”

She wept upon the trembling shore,

And whispered, “I can’t pretend anymore.”

The ocean kissed her trembling feet,

The stars hung low in defeat.

The world she established began to fade,

But in that void, her soul was made.

The dandelion with the heart of rose,

At last, in seclusion, found repose.

No crowd, no crown, no gilded dream

Just moonlight’s mercy and sea’s soft gleam.

And as the tide inhaled her name,

The earth resurrected why she came.

Her strength was never in being seen

But in the love that unveiled between

The cracks of pain, the quiet cries,

The truth that lives when glory dies.

By Pragati Agrawal