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The Evening I Made a Deal With Fire

On January 31, 2026 by archiveuser

I had just finished a run.

It was one of those cold December evenings where the air feels crispier on the skin. The rain had just wrapped up its work for the night.

My breath was still fast. My face warm from the effort.
And yet, my body shivered, heat and cold, negotiating their own uneasy truce within me.

I sat at the park bench, unwilling to rush back into the house or greet anyone. I felt there was something suspended in that air. Something unfinished.

I extended my hand slightly. I could see my soul blazing in blue on the white of my palm.

It was alive and unmistakenly mine.

And I negotiated with the fire I felt but couldn’t see.

Take this, I said quietly.
Take this along with my flesh, and the wetness running in my veins.
Will it do?
For you?

For the book I have been meaning to write.

It looked at me then.
With eyes that pierced straight through whatever pretence I might still have been holding onto.

I think I saw it nod—but I can’t be sure it said yes.

It kept glaring, as if waiting to see whether I would step back.
Whether I would reconsider.
Whether this was just another moment of courage that would dissolve by morning.

I didn’t look away.

If anything, I felt more assured.

I knew without doubt that I wanted it written. Through me.
Of a woman as ordinary as you and me.
And just as extraordinary as you and me.

A woman as irrational as you and me.
As self-aware.
As flawed.
As awake.

A woman who walks this everyday life with you and me.
Who stumbles where we stumble.
Who rises where we rise.

So that we may see her.
And in seeing her, remember something we were taught to forget.

That the power has always resided within you and me.

Not someday.
Not when we earn it.
Not when we are ready.

But in the moment we claim it.

And in that

We become a goddess.
We become baked in fire.
Naked, bodyless with divinity possessed

We become the fire that not just destroys but reveals

We become the creator.
The warrior.

Whole, Feminine and Masculin, the in-between.

And then, mercifully neither.
Complete without needing anyone. Anything.

And finally we become one with the Shivam
the stillness beneath motion,
the silence beneath sound,
the truth beneath every becoming.

That evening, standing in the cold with rain still clinging to the world, I understood something simple and terrifying:

Writing this book was not about me or time or courage.

It was about my intent.

To offer myself.
To not step back.
To let the fire take what it needed from me.

And to trust that whatever remained would be enough.

To Write.