It presents gravels before my feet,

The sea

When it meets the sand,

Holding my longing gaze as I stand

Atop coffined treasures

And pebbles filled with flints made from memories,

That weigh my slippers

Down to this deserted beach.

Myriad secrets encaged in their bottle shaped ampoules

Float aimlessly like vagabonds do.

Imprisoned in cells of reminiscence,

They await their acquittal sometime hence.

Perhaps they will,

Perhaps they won’t,

Perhaps the messages in such bottles

Are never supposed to soar.

But nothing deters me,

Neither the lack of aim nor the ambiguity,

From smothering a piece of paper with my scrawls.

It’s just a letter after all.

Even if I were to amass the Seven Seas

To ink the fragile leaves of my letters,

They’d exhaust before my letters cease to speak.

Perhaps I should only whisper.

Although the warmth of my words

Strangles their guardian’s neck,

Their utopic journey in my utopic world

Offers me some solace.

Following a benign spring from the edge of the shore,

My wistful musings brace themselves to float.

Shifa