Kali Doesn’t Want Your Sweetness
A remembrance for the part of you that knows how to burn
They always depict her with her tongue out.
Wild-eyed. Bare-breasted. Blood on her lips.
A garland of severed heads,
a skirt of arms,
a blade in one hand and a blessing in the other.
Kali is not here to be liked.
She is not here to soothe you.
She is here to free you.
And that freedom?
It rarely comes gently.
Kali is the part of you that knows when something is done.
When the lover has become a cage.
When the story has turned into a prison.
When the identity you’ve been clinging to
no longer fits the shape of your becoming.
She is the holy no.
The cosmic exhale.
The scream you swallowed when you were told to be quiet.
She is destruction, yes.
But only of what was never truly you.
You feel her when your throat tightens and you finally speak.
When you rage, not to hurt, but to cleanse.
When you choose yourself,
even when it means being alone.
Kali doesn’t want your sweetness.
She wants your truth.
The raw, cracked-open kind.
The grief beneath the numbness.
The desire beneath the performance.
The fury that has been waiting at the gates of your ribcage,
asking to be let through.
If you let her in,
she will wreck you
but only the parts that were keeping you small.
She will ask for your attachments.
She will tear the mask from your face.
She will dance on the corpse of your illusions
until all that remains
is what cannot be taken from you.
Kali teaches you how to die while living.
How to make space.
How to stop clinging to what no longer serves you
just because it’s familiar.
She is the holy darkness.
The sacred void.
The fire at the center of your own undoing.
And from that fire
you rise.
Not polished.
But real.
Not purified.
But powerful.
Not less.
But more.
So if you feel like something in you is ending
if you’re aching, breaking, shedding
that’s it.
You’re being initiated.
And Kali is with you.
Sword in hand.
Eyes on fire.
Saying,
“You were never meant to stay the same.”
Let her burn it down.
Let her clear the ground.
Let her show you who you are
when nothing is left to protect.
Because that version of you?
She is unstoppable.
And she was always waiting.