More facts: The cell is small. The Tour Guide is tall and the effort he exerts to keep his head bowed under the low ceiling can be measured by the volume of sweat beading his brow. He says that the monks who lived in this cluster of cells did not believe the world was real. They believed the entirety of their existence was a test from God. So I try to consider all of these things which are imaginary: Imagined ceiling. Imagined sweat. Imagined Tour Guide. Can a sacrifice be real if it is not real? That word again like brass. I bite the end of my pencil and notice that the group has moved on into a different cell carved from the same stone surrounded by the same desert. The Tour Guide is talking about a monk who was said to have eaten nothing but dust for forty years. He was said to have collected his tears in a red ceramic cup. I scurry. The Tour Guide gasps air like a goldfish under a microscope. I evaluate whether I could sustain myself on faith alone. Outside, the desert smells thick and arid like pond scum. I pull my scarf across my mouth because I cannot imagine how to substantiate wine from these jugs of sand but still I do.
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Danielle Rose is the author of At First & Then (Black Lawrence Press) and The History of Mountains (Variant Lit). Her work can be found in Palette Poetry, Hobart Pulp, and Sundog Lit.