Drowned and Blooming

A droplet falls from the sky.

It bounces off of your nose and slips delicately into the water. No ripples span across the lake. You lean closer, thinking that maybe if you place your eyelashes up against the crystal coolness you’ll see them. Further you lean until the tilt is too much and gravity pulls you downward. 

Chin first you dip into the water, coming face to face with a pine cone. The water doesn’t burn your eyes. In fact, it feels cool against your irises, opening them up to take in every dust particle as they float to the bottom. Fish and squirrels course past you, speeding through the water like darts on their way to a bullseye. 

You follow, enchanted by their movements. Owls and song birds, even deer, glide through the water more gracefully than you ever could. You’d never noticed it before, but an entire forest spanned across the bottom of the lake. Evergreens shoot for the sunshine that falls down from above like searchlights, catching the purple in raven feathers better down here than it ever did up there. 

Water follows breath into your lungs, filling you up. You discover quickly that you can take in more water and make yourself heavier, using it to get closer to the bottom. Grass grows where sand should be. Ladybugs decorate water lilies like sprinkles on cupcakes. A praying mantis floats down from somewhere up above to land delicately on your finger. You aren’t sure when you reached out your hand. He stares at you for a moment, his big eyes reflecting the image of your face back at you. 

Suddenly, you realize that you don’t want to leave this place. Down here, you feel light. The sunshine reaches all the way to the bottom, warming you despite the coolness of the water. The animals are helpful, tugging you along with them when you get too tired to swim. The mantis doesn’t leave your side. He guides you forward, past streams and birds nests and strawberries growing on trees rather than bushes. The bushes instead grow apples, pears, and peaches, in all shapes and sizes, their colors surpassing that of any corals or anemones you’ve seen before. 

A flower floats alone, suspended halfway between the bottom of the lake and the glass ceiling at the top. The water here is darker and more cool. A soft current curls around your torso, pulling you forward of its own volition. The mantis almost pats your shoulder as if to reassure you that everything is fine. He gives you one last look before haphazardly making his way forward. Two times he circles the flower, as if inspecting it. The current tilts you upright so that you come face to face with a soft pink petal. 

Images appear on the petals. Moments, thoughts, breaths - all of them belong to you. The time at your eleventh birthday party when your parents used trick candles and laughed at you as you struggled to blow them out. A boy, the first person you’d kissed, smiles as he reaches forward to take your hand. Blonde hair down to the waist of a girl just two inches shorter than you shines golden in the sun, and even beneath the water, a million miles away, you fall in love all over again. 

One by one, the petals detach from the bud. They grow in size until they are the size of elephants. You don’t realize them collecting around you until your arms are pressed to your sides. You can’t move. The mantis makes circles around you now, going faster and faster until you cannot differentiate him from the bubbles collecting somewhere below you. An energy fills your muscles, causing them to clench the way that they do whenever you get scared. The harder you struggle, the tighter the petals wind themselves. They’re beginning to close over your chest, your neck, and then finally your face. The mantis is the last thing that you see before they close completely. 

You can sense movement, but you aren’t sure in what direction you’re going. For the first time since you slipped into the lake, you feel as if you’re drowning. You feel a crash, and the petals explode, sending you into the air in millions of little pieces. The mantis is there as you hang, suspended in mid air. You’ve finally bloomed.

About the Author

Rachel Gonzalez is a senior English major working toward a future in publishing and fiction writing. Her work explores cognition in moments of complete absurdity, chaos, and what it means to be human.