It rained for nine hours. On and off, the clouds tipped their hats at the sun before blocking its path. The girl had been on the route to purchase a few groceries. Nuts and apples. Perhaps a bright orange squash if they had it.

Fall had arrived. Muddy boots. Damp wool. Those crickets still chirping in the dark, and the goldfinch insistently banging their beaks at the mirrored windows. They fluffed their feathers and dove off the branch of the oak tree. Slamming themselves into the glass and disrupting the meditation.

Was it intentional? Every action carries in it the potential to evolve. Birds see from the high ground, yet must return to the earth for their source of nourishment, digging worms from the roots.

Autumn is the river gushing over the long rocks, pummelling the stones with the help of the rain. The hard edges will be worn down like the world's resolve to do better.

Is there such a thing as evil? The girl bid her shadow goodnight in the evening. She turned off the fluorescent lights and sat on the floor, squatting with her fingertips against the wooden floorboards.

Om Dum Durgayei Namaha - we invoke the Divine Mother, Maa Durga, to repel jealousy, greed, and anger. She blesses those who call upon her with feminine energy to ward off negative spirits.

Navaratri started this week; it is the nine-day festival to honor the avatars of Durga.

The girl was dressed in white and gold. She offered Durga her voice through powerful mantras and set out seeds and flowers at her altar, where Ganesha presided over a garland of malas.

How to offer oneself to the divine? What does it mean to pray? It came so naturally to the girl, the desire to devote oneself to the energy of an archetype, that she could not explain it when asked.

Some things are so effortless to achieve while others take more consideration.

The girl had a call with her lover on the second date of Navaratri. She missed him, and the removal was difficult to endure. He sent her voice recordings punctuated by his arousal. Purring in her ear, she listened, sitting on the edge of her bed with her feet on the cold floor. Her heart thundered, and blood rushed to her head. She was too hot for the scarf she had been instructed to tie at her crown.

Never mind, she said to herself, the symbol needn't be so obvious!

When the lover called and told the girl that he was going on a date, she was not surprised. She'd felt his lust building for weeks. She enjoyed their brief interludes via audio files yet knew deep down in her soul-body that it would not be enough to sustain his passion.

She liked this about him: the craving! There are many ways to satiate one's desire. The girl ate a small square of dark chocolate in the dark. She'd walk to the river and stick her bare toes in the sand and listen to the rushing and imagine it moving into and through her bloodstream. She was always so so hot! And the river always ran cold.

She'd watch the ripples of starlight on the stream as she sucked on the chocolate. Grief does not break a woman the same way it does a man.

Women are worn down more slowly, like the stones in the river bed.

Quiet and calm, intensities need a container! And the girl could rise to the occasion as the waters had in the rainstorm. When the tempest called, she cried out with it!

All the things that occur in a single line of one day. She was born many times over in the mark of one hour. How awkward it is to be lonely. How deplorable it is to be sad! And yet she relished it with the fervor of someone sitting down to a feast with friends.

Maybe we have a phone call, he'd said.

Who? The girl replied.

Me with you and the girl when she comes. We can call you. Together it will be nice.

What is her name?

Sabahat.

Irrational behavior can teach you something new about yourself. The girl sought out people who’d endured pain. Separation, rejection, annihilation; anything the soul could and had survived, she was drawn to as an ant to sugar.

Sweetness kills, and the insects had drowned in the jar of honey the girl had left on the dresser without its lid. Too bad, she’d thought, fishing them out with a little silver spoon. Tempted by the treat. It is better to have self-discipline.

The girl held onto poetry for the sake of her spirit! She needed something to loosen the noose she felt grasping her neck. There was a little gap where she’d slip out and run barefoot in the rain. The only way to connect to the heart was through the wild.

Where are you, babe?

Hiking.

What is this, hiking?

A walk in the woods.

Her new friend spoke Italian, and the words were delicious to taste as she rambled on the phone with her family. Nectar for the ears. The girl walked too close behind her and almost tripped at her heels. Language was such a barrier and a breaking point. She could never say what she felt fully to her lover. Laughter was her way of showing him it was all going to be ok. She sent him pictures of the white horses that roamed the winding roads of Pauri Garhwal. It was meant to rain all week. Stripped of sunlight, the girl spent most days lying in bed with a book. She’d picked up a novel she’d put down nearly eight months ago.

She was a different person then, and the story was no longer what it was to her at that time. Presently, she was enthralled by the protagonist - her short, dark hair. The red dresses she wore in Morocco, the little gold satchel she carried at a hip. A dressmaker who smuggled secrets to the British Secret Services to help end the second war. Historical Fiction is a balming agent if you can remove yourself from the past and focus on the present.

You will not recognize me when I return, she thought to say to her lover.

She bit her lip.

Babe, you there?

Evet.

What is that noise?

It is the rain and the river, the girl replied.

Glittering and utterly riotous, the girl wiped the tears from her eyes.

Photo source.