The Black Horse and the Dawn Shadow

 The Black Horse and the Dawn Shadow

The black horse and the dawn shadow—

two unanswered questions

galloping across the same horizon.

Amidst the clouds,

she peeps from an unseen place,

not seeking the world,

but wondering whether the world

has ever truly seen her.

She roams without a map,

yet every wandering carries

the burden of an invisible destination.

Perhaps it is not the feet that lose their way,

but the mind that mistakes motion for purpose.

Thoughts trail quietly behind the screen,

where no applause is heard,

where every smile is rehearsed,

and every silence speaks

a language forgotten by the tongue.

Who, then, is the traveller?

The one crossing the earth,

or the one crossing herself?

The Director raises his lens—

not towards the spectacle,

but into the breathing breeze,

for truth has never loved

the brightness of the stage.

He searches where the eye refuses to linger—

among frozen starry snowflakes,

where time pauses

without asking eternity for permission.

There he discovers

that every snowflake is a memory

too delicate to become history;

every star,

a wound that learned to shine.

The black horse does not fear the dawn,

for darkness and light

are merely two garments

worn by the same eternity.

The shadow does not mourn

its disappearance,

because it knows

that absence is another form of presence.

And perhaps life itself

is nothing more

than a cloud searching for its own sky,

a breeze carrying borrowed names,

a traveller pursuing destinations

that were never places,

only awakenings.

For we spend our days

trying to arrive somewhere,

until one quiet dawn

reveals the oldest truth—

that existence

was never asking us to arrive.

It was asking us

to awaken.

- Mayanglambam Meerina Leimarenbi