Salt Cathedral

Beneath the plain the miners carved a nave from living halite, each wall licked smooth by centuries of breath, and the chandeliers are crystal pulled from the same wounded seam.

Down here the air tastes of the sea that left ten million years ago, a ghost pressing its tongue against the roof of every mouth that dares to sing.

The saints along the corridor dissolve a little with each visitor— their faces soften into suggestion, noses retreating, fingers joining back into the block.

Someone has placed fresh marigolds at the altar's foot. They will not rot. The salt preserves what it touches the way grief preserves a room: nothing grows, but nothing goes.

I stand where the acoustics gather and clap once. The echo returns changed, a brighter consonant, as though the cathedral answered in its own language of slow erasure.