There is a particular dark that belongs to deep water at night, navy gone almost black, current still visible only in the way it moves. Here, that dark spreads across the floor: ridges run diagonal in long, uneven sweeps, breaking near one corner into something tighter, more agitated, as if a current had met a rock it didn't expect. Hand-tufted by the weavers of Jodhpur, the wool is carved rather than dyed into its pattern, so the lines surface only when light crosses them at an angle, otherwise sinking back into the navy. Set beneath a low bench in pale oak, its depth holds a room together without lightening it. Beneath a Georgian cornice, or against the bare height of a concrete ceiling, the current holds its course either way. In a Richmond riverside house, lamplight raking low across the ridges, the floor moves the way water does after dark.
