Salt Cathedral

Beneath the hill the miners carved a nave from living salt, each crystal face a frozen breath the earth had held for centuries.

Light enters through no window here but glows from within the walls themselves, a pale fire older than language, older than the first prayer spoken underground.

Water finds its way down slowly, sculpting chancel and altar with the patience only stone possesses, dissolving what it also builds.

I have stood in rooms like this before, not underground but inside a silence that opened suddenly between two people, vast and glittering and unsupported.

We carry our own salt cathedrals, hollowed out by what we lost, and sometimes, if the angle holds, the whole interior catches light.