Paused - Print

Paused

In the silence of a moonless field,

a black horse stands

not frozen,

but listening.

Darkness presses in,

thick with questions that have no shape,

no edge to follow,

no path to trust.

And still

he does not run.

Muscle remembers motion,

the urge to flee, to chase, to choose

but something deeper roots him

to the quiet beneath his hooves.

Paused.

Not weakness,

not fear,

but a sacred refusal

to move without knowing.

His ears flick toward the unseen,

his breath slow, deliberate

each inhale gathering fragments

of what cannot yet be understood.

For even in darkness,

there is information in stillness.

Even in not moving,

there is direction.

Unclarity knocks loudest

when we rush to answer it.

But the horse knows

not all doors must be opened at once.

So he waits.

Alert,

aware,

alive in the in-between.

Because sometimes

the bravest step forward

is no step at all

until the ground beneath intention

becomes steady again.

And when it does,

he will move

not in panic,

but in knowing.

by Wilhelmina Stöcker