Salt Cathedral

Somewhere beneath the plains a cathedral carved itself from salt — no architect, only pressure and the patience of brine finding its slow way through limestone.

The walls hold light the way a throat holds song, translucent, faintly pink, veined with the residue of ancient seas that forgot they were water.

I have stood in rooms like that, hollowed by what passed through me, surprised to find the absence had a shape, and the shape was almost beautiful.

They say the miners left their handprints on the pillars — not for art, but to test the moisture, to know if the mountain was still weeping.

Some nights I press my palm against the cool wall of sleep and wait for that same answer, that slow dissolve that means the earth remembers rain.