there are a thousand terrifying things about caves,

but the scariest, to me, is how some say the passages feel too wide, just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.

humans have walked, crawled, swam, pushed through crevices like octopi into jars of fish, threaded their way through the veins of the earth,

but this is not a space that was made for them.

this hole in the ground is not your cathedral; there is no love for your gods in its hollowed heart; it is you who finds in limestone the sublime or the anodyne.

there is no purpose, nothing beyond your capacity for infinite interpretation.

just water and salt and rock and tectonics conspiring (or not, as conspiracy implies intent) to carve out grooves, conglomerate masses, the opposite of architecture.