A woman stands in a doorway at blue dawn while, inside, her own mourning is already underway: butter lamps lit, marigolds laid, a white cloth beside her framed portrait. She was found alive ten days after the floods, and this is the moment the ritual stops. The painting holds the room in the second before anyone can speak, warm lamplight meeting cold morning air across the threshold.

I wanted the light to do the work. The room is gold with lamps meant for the dead; the door is full of dawn and a living woman. Where those two lights meet is the whole painting. I gave the mourning cloth one small catching flame — a ritual interrupted mid-gesture, not completed — and I know it reads harder than that, closer to the fires and losses the floods actually left behind. I have let it stay. It is honest about what she came home through. The portrait beside it is untouched, still clearly her face, and she is standing in front of it. Look for the small bird near the edge, waiting out the last of the night.