Salt Cathedral

Somewhere beneath the plateau the earth has been hollowing itself for centuries, mineral by mineral, a patience no surface creature could replicate.

The walls are faceted and wet, catching lantern light like the inside of a word you almost remember— syllable by syllable it retreats into the dark of your mouth.

I have read that miners carved altars here, knelt on floors of crystal, prayed to a god who answered only in the language of pressure and time.

What faith it must take to worship inside the thing that is slowly dissolving, to trust the architecture of loss— each hollow a room made possible by what is no longer there.

I carry this with me back to the surface: the knowledge that absence can hold a cathedral, that what the earth releases becomes the space we stand in, breathing.