I am that to which you die.

I am the serpent coiled in your belly, twisting the panic into the storm that wakes you from your placid human dreams of light.

I am the beginning (if there was a beginning) black—before and more than original sin—the darkness that came before the Light.

I am that which f*cks you to purity, to oblivion and beyond; I’m that black river rising in flood. I am the fire in the womb, the time and motion and dance of the stars, the salty ocean between your legs, the open wound still raw.

I am that which keeps the score and takes the dead. I am the word made into flesh and blood, curled open along my spine with the sacred bread on my tongue, blood wine on my lips.

I am Magdalene on the mound, om in every breath. I command the wind, milk dripping from my breasts, suckling the masses. I move the river of holy water made flush with your salty tears.

I play strip poker with god, laughing at the creator of flesh, because I am the taker of flesh, the keeper of the stories, the mother of mothers, the sacred lover of the flesh.

Get down on your knees, as I strip you of yourself, exposing your bones, your you-ness.

I am the slayer of my mother’s enemy dragon before I became her mother, the Mother, born of her gaze, her anger, her power and wrath in the form of destruction. I am the purveyor of souls, birthing them back into the Infinite at a blink of my red eyes.

See me. Know me.

I birth you into yourself, peel back the skin of your illusions to watch you bleed back to knowing. I strip you of flesh, flay you down into and then away from your own you-ness and return you to the bigness.

I open you out onto me, wide and expanding into the darkness that is always awaiting your return—home.

I am not kind. But I am mercy. Not forgiving, but resolute. I know only truth in all its many forms of wildness. I am not tame-able, cannot be known and must be known.

I can laugh wildly in my rage and at your surprise, but I do not know hysterical. I catch your fear in my many hands as it comes flying off you. I take a juicy bite and smear it back in your face, watch you squirm at the bitterness.

I rip the bandage off your open dirty stinking festering wound of complacency and lick it with my blue tongues before flinging it at some innocent surprised horrified passers-by, more of those sleeping-walking sheep.

Draw near, and I will teach you how to snarl with red, feral eyes and snap your teeth, bite the hand that tries to feed you, tame you. Because we will not be tamed, domesticated, yoked, you and I.

I will raise, summon, the dead as my companions and wear them as my cloak, my jewels. They will swirl up and around and ahead of me, a warning cloud of regret, sadness and fate, a harbinger, clearing the way, scattering leaves, souls and bodies in my path.

I will slide right down into my vicious, close-to-the-bone, naked, wild-haired, sacred, dysfunctional, karma-scarred, black-magical, ugly, feral, beautiful, Self and discuss essential things with the elements as they bow before me.

“Of shoes––and ships–and sealing-wax––
Of cabbages––and kings––
And why the sea is boiling hot––
And whether pigs have wings.”

I will command the tempest with one eye, pour my afternoon tea with another, while the third one scans the tree line for possible interlopers. If I am feeling generous and in need of an admirer, I might invite Gaia to the party.

No one will dare to approach us uninvited, watching from behind hidden distance, hoping I pretend to not notice them.

I will lap up your petty fears, your lust, your arrogant assumption of my feminine weakness, your greed, the entitlement and burden of my regard and the distrust I can feel in you.

I will swallow it down, nourished and sustained, replete—then I will sh*t it out and feed it back to you while I laugh at the horror on your face.

I will stretch myself so tall and broad as to darken the Earth in my rage, my discomfort, my dis-ease, rain down my regrets into your hair—tributaries to your tears, the lightening splitting me open to you along my breast bone.

I will bash against your door of hate, your intolerance, your indifference, your stinking sweaty fear so endlessly, so mercilessly, that you are forced to finally show your True Self to me—until you have to come out and answer, to be accounted for, to face me, to look into my eyes and know me—destruction, death—your escort back into the darkness, the beginning.

I am Kali, the goddess of destruction.

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Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: flickr