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
