Despite our muddy backgrounds,  
we congregated all the pureness and
reached out for the sun.
Promised that we’d stay untouched
from impurity.

Then nightfall alongside torment came.
You closed down,
submerged back into the mud we bloomed out.
And I heard you lament, submerged,
“I will live through this until it takes my life.”

Alone, I remained in the gloom.
The darkness of isolation crept up,
with muck jerking at my roots.
Within above, I told the moon,
“I’ll open for you another night.”

Inside myself, I suffocated
remembering who I was.
From the dirt we came,
grime that nurtured us,
the smite that we blossomed from.

Yet you shoved yourself back in,
took the filth as your selfhood.
Kept shut to the moon, believing
you are a facade
since no one knew your roots.

If anyone was ****, it was me.
The roots of yours could be ripped out.
Reflected in the sunshine,
still you’d be observed as clean.
I’d die a martyr for that belief.

The sun rises as you remerge,
the stains you’ve collected fall off.
You are left pure, intact,
despite it all.
You are my lotus.