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Fiction

An Anchorite’s Meditation on Water

by Chanel Earl

Here, water is delivered daily, though sometimes in a single day the sun sets and rises several times. I have learned to catch the rain as it drips through the ceiling, to begin rationing when my bowl is near empty, to clean myself with dust. To never complain.

Through my window is a running stream, cool and clear. I hear it in the spring, and on summer days I can see the light bouncing off its ever-changing surface.

The promise is that those who drink of the waters that He gives them will never thirst. And I have drunk and drunk again. I have bathed in the troubled pool of Bethesda, dipped deep into the wells of eternal life, tasted the waters now turned to wine in my own soul, and like Ezekiel, I have waded past my knees and loins until I was healed.

There are waters and then there are waters. And though I know the one and have learned to never complain, I would also know the other.

I know what heaven means; it means that I will finally drink my fill and never thirst again. I will feel water flow over my head, down my body to pool at my feet, which will soak until the dirt seeps out of the cracks in my heels, clean and pure.

Chanel Earl is currently pursuing her MFA in fiction at Brigham Young University. Her work has appeared in print and online.