Two Epistles
- Apr 8, 2022
- 2 min read
by Danielle Rose
Epistle on Water
The point is to make distance between yourself and everything you desire but I am so full of leaking. Around me there are facts that are flowing like a faucet: How we are now in a small cave not dissimilar to bread baking, how the monk’s cell is carved from a tall rock-face that reminds me of my father. How I am traveling alone. How far I am from my home. The Tour Guide sneezes each time he tries to pronounce the word solitude and for a moment the cool stone is a great cathedral bathed in the light of flashing cameras. A river of illumination that slips through my fingers. And then something shifts and a flow is diverted like a snowbank melting or this question I have about a specific word I keep using like sacrifice.
The cell rises. Everything falls.
Epistle on Nourishment
Later that evening over dinner the Tour Guide told us more stories. Like how the monks would starve themselves to become more like God. Can you imagine? Grasping for air as if stranded between two oceans. The Tour Guide explains that their purpose was to avoid sin. I, too, am avoiding something and excuse myself from the group early to go to bed. As I am leaving I can hear the Tour Guide claim that the monks’ bodies would never decay. He said that deep in the desert there are still monks whose bodies, today, pray. I wonder if this is sacrifice. The Tour Guide sneezes. I think perhaps I should talk to God, too. And so I try, I do.
Danielle Rose is the author of AT FIRST & THEN and THE HISTORY OF MOUNTAINS. Her work can be found at Palette, Hobart & Pithead Chapel.
