Cold Battered Seashells

By Shreyas Raman

What happens when a dream is destroyed?

Does its carcass blend into a white shoreline, 

like cold battered seashells, scattered under the scalding sand?

Or does its mighty swell crash to fleeting foam,

like an infant tide, gone still, in its voyage to the golden land.

Does it erode and bleach fleshy souls, to coiled reefs of hollow bones?

Or pile bodies on bodies at the shore, barred from breaking heaven’s door?

Maybe it surges -- a storm with winds and sparks to embolden,

that turns sand into silt, as the sun engulfs the horizon, 

Or does it remain unbroken, drifting amidst the black ocean?

By Shreyas Raman