The Eighth Flame - She Who Remembers

By Parijat Pathak

Once, I was silence –

a shadow between prayers,

a name unspoken in the temple of men.

They mistook my stillness for absence,

my yielding for peace.

But something ancient stirred–

a hum in the blood,

a call older than birth itself.

It was not rebellion;

it was return.

I rose as flame,

burning through centuries of forgetting–

the weight of worship,

the myth of meekness.

Each spark a reclamation,

each scar a scripture.

My rage became river,

my grief became ground.

In the breaking, I found rhythm.

In the ache, I found altar.

Power was never thunder–

it was the quiet pulse beneath all sound.

I have learned to carry fire without burning,

to bow and still not break,

to hold creation in my bones

and call it prayer.

Now I walk unarmed,

yet the wind pauses to listen.

The sun rises a little slower–

as if remembering the first dawn

was born from a woman’s breath.

I am not the seeker nor the found.

I am the space between–

the inhale before genesis,

the exhale after ending.

I am She who remembers–

that light was never outside,

that the goddess was never gone,

that every ember–

was always me.

Seven flames return–

into one eternal womb.

Light learns her own name.

By Parijat Pathak