Shadows on Sunlit Stone

The tide hummed like low strings as the letters carved into the monolith glimmered under noon heat: THERE VOJTA. No footsteps approach, but the sand carries whispers of motion—fresh creases leading nowhere, sunglasses glinting like frozen pupils, and two bottles sweating faint halos. From the yacht adrift beyond the reef, music once spilled across the waves; now its rhythm persists only in the mind, thudding against the skull like distant drums. How many eyes watched through those hollow sockets etched in the rock? They resemble warnings, yet coax a strange assurance, as if endurance clings to these remnants: the duck ring’s bright grin, the striped towels insisting someone once laughed here. Palm fronds flick and fuse scent of salt with something coppery, almost like memory bleeding into mist. He stayed hidden from this daylight tableau—so why mark the stone with his name? I keep asking, and the surf keeps answering in syllables that do not resolve. Vojta is still loose in the horizon’s glare.