The brightest red I have ever seen...

is the blood of a goat slaughtered as an offering to the Hindu Goddess Kali. Perhaps the gentle family making the offering would choose a word other than slaughter to describe slitting the throat of a trembling goat and letting the steaming blood shower the temple with devotion. The four year-old son seemed peculiarly unshaken by the death of the goat whose body quivered for an eternal moment after the beheading. I nearly thought he would walk in the blood to feel the warmth.

I arrive at Dakshinkali temple not to judge, but to observe. Flowers and ritual pigments color the affair with the ripest orange and yellow. But it is the brightest red that stuffs cotton down my throat and makes my heart feel like a knot of rubber-bands. The goat was shaking: standing with its hind legs wide and unstable, as if it would faint at the smell of its prescribed death. Impermanence is palpable: a hovering cloud of that same cotton-in-the-mouth feeling, but in a way a blessed reminder of how to live.

The brightest red I have ever seen is the blood of a goat slaughtered on the steps of Dakshinkali temple. May the life-force of the trembling goat appease Kali-Ma and send blessings, like music notes, into the world. Death is alive on the bloody steps of sacrifice.