Fourteen Short Stories for the Epic of Cavern Discoveries

I
At the first breath, the rock split its side for me,
and the world fell quiet to hear my stride,
for every gesture traced a pale decree,
and every trace a pact with the void outside.

II
I descended through veins where time unweaves,
and the ground throbbed like a wounded creature,
yet I followed, guided by what cleaves,
deep in the name that never found its feature.

III
The cavern taught me how to read the night,
as one who deciphers an inverted chart,
and every shadow held a future tight,
asking for my body as its hearth.

IV
I found inscriptions the wind had tried to erase,
but the stone preserved them as a guarded vow,
and in them I saw the face that shaped my face,
before I was born from the fear I carry now.

V
There were rivers flowing inward to the core,
as if the world drank from its own abyss,
and I, within, was only a splintered shore,
an echo learning the weight of its genesis.

VI
Stalactites fell like syllables in descent,
in a language silence had long devised,
and I gathered them as parables meant,
to rebuild the voice I had sacrificed.

VII
I saw beings made of pure omission,
walking without ever touching the ground,
and I knew that my own composition,
was a pact between the body and erosion’s sound.

VIII
The air grew thick as if sealing a vow,
and each breath became a sworn intent,
for I sensed the farthest path allowed,
is always the one born from thought’s descent.

IX
I touched walls that pulsed like living veins,
and felt in them the planet’s memory,
for every fold concealed refrains,
that time had kept as talismanic history.

X
Midway through the crossing, I lost my name,
and gained another forged from quiet’s core,
for only those who descend where the world lays claim,
discover what remains of their before.

XI
The light thinned until it was only a thread,
a faint stitch binding the hollow’s seam,
and I walked on, knowing haste misled,
what rises from the detour’s dream.

XII
I found a lake that reflected nothing at all,
and understood that nothing was my mirror,
for truth, when unbearably heavy to recall,
hides in the oldest shimmer.

XIII
The ground opened in a slow, deliberate plea,
as if the earth itself asked for a name,
and I offered it my despondency,
so it could shape it into hunger’s flame.

XIV
At last, the cavern returned me to the day,
with my body marked by secret maps within,
and I knew the deepest abyss on the way,
is always the one we cradle in our skin.