Smoke in the Stone

Sanahin was nearly empty when I came in, which I recommend arranging if you can. The interior is black basalt, arches over arches, and the light arrives through one window like a decision. Someone had lit incense earlier; a single ribbon of smoke still stood in the air, turning slowly, holding the beam the way a page holds a sentence.

I put a scarf over my hair, less out of doctrine than out of respect for rooms that are older than my entire family tree, and stood where the smoke was. The acoustics are the true architecture. A cough becomes a confession. A footstep becomes an argument. I did not say anything out loud, and the building heard it anyway.

I am not religious. I am, however, professionally interested in how stone remembers, and this stone has been listening since the tenth century. It made my notebooks feel young and loud. I wrote one line inside and saved the rest for the courtyard.