Beloved,
I did not know your name until I saw your picture on a shop wall, years ago, and looked away. Dark as the night sky. Fierce eyes. A garland I did not understand. I was raised far from your temples and your songs, and somewhere along the way I had learned to be afraid of a fierce face.
I come to you as a guest, still learning, not as one who knows your rites. What I have learned is that the people who love you most call you Ma. Mother. That your fierceness is not cruelty but protection, the kind any mother shows when something threatens her child.
Then I read the old story of Raktabija, the demon whose every spilled drop of blood rose up as another demon. Fight him and he multiplies. I knew that story in my body before I knew it on the page. The worry that doubles each time I argue with it. The habit that grows back stronger each time I swear it off. The same quarrel, year after year, in a new kitchen.
And you opened your mouth and took in every drop before it could touch the ground. The cycle ended. I think of that on moonless nights now, when something in my life is finally, mercifully ending, and I feel lighter instead of lost.
I am not brave yet. But I am told the ones who come to you trembling are welcome too.
So tonight I will float one red flower in a bowl of water, light a small lamp and stay beside it, and listen to Ramprasad's songs to you, sung by those who have loved you all their lives. I bring you the pattern I am ready to release, beloved, and ask only for the courage to let it go.