Her own face lay beneath the sediment. Her own hair, a loose cloud of black fronds. Those were her own eyes, closed as if in sleep. From her chest bloomed a great lotus, bursting through exposed ribs. From her eyes streamed marigold petals, flecked gold and carnelian, seeping from beneath the closed lids. Not a reflection. She knew it wasn’t that. And if she hadn’t been sure, she saw beneath it, in the slow shifting gray of the water’s bed, a dozen more tangled figures, held by lotus roots, their hair coiling in water, their bodies half root and half flesh, beautiful and strange.
