Night lowered itself gently onto the lake,
like a thought too quiet to be spoken.
The water held no edges-
only a slow, breathing darkness,
a surface that remembered everything
and revealed nothing.
She entered without ceremony.
No splash.
No witness.
Only the soft surrender of fabric and skin,
the hush of something choosing
to be held.
The cold did not bite.
It listened.
Her body leaned back into the unknown,
hair dissolving into ink,
arms unanchored-
as if gravity had forgotten her name.
Above, the world blurred.
Trees bent into wavering shadows,
stars trembled like uncertain truths,
and the sky forgot how to stay still.
But she did not fall.
She hovered-
a quiet defiance.
Because of the yellow.
That improbable, stubborn yellow
spreading beneath the surface,
glowing where light should not reach,
refusing the language of drowning.
A small sun
adrift in a dark that swallowed everything else.
The lake tried, perhaps-
with its depth, its silence, its ancient pull-
to take her into its unending sentence.
But the color said no.
It widened, breathed, insisted:
You are not finished.
You are not gone.
You are still seen, even here.
And so she remained-
suspended between vanishing and becoming,
between the weight of the world
and the mercy of release.
Her chest rose.
Fell.
Rose again.
A rhythm.
A proof.
Somewhere in that fragile floating,
she remembered herself-
not as she had been,
not as she feared she was becoming,
but as something still luminous,
still unwilling to disappear.
The water could blur her edges,
soften her outline,
steal the certainty of form-
but not the color.
Never the color.
It lingered,
burning quietly beneath the surface,
a whisper against the dark:
Even here-
especially here-
I remain.
