By Dave
The sand is an ocean without mercy.
For forty days it has named me Son.
Each grain a whisper of what I must become.
I asked for bread and was given silence.
I asked for light and was given fire.
I asked for God—
and the wind answered wait.
Then a rose grew in the stone.
No water, no root, only will.
Its red bled against the pale of the world,
a wound that refused to close.
I knelt before it.
It smelled of both heaven and rot,
and I knew the kingdom would be the same.
Temptation came not as the serpent
but as the bloom—
beauty promising meaning,
color promising truth.
I touched its thorns and felt my blood begin.
“Is this how You speak?” I asked.
And the sky broke open.
Rain—
first a single drop,
then the whole heaven collapsing.
It filled my mouth like a name I had forgotten.
It washed the rose into the earth,
and me with it.
I could not tell if I was saved or undone.
Only that God was in the rain,
and the world was beginning again.