Wet Roof Reckoning

The rain doesn’t fall so much as needle the skin, and I feel it through my boots as I test the slick edge of the roof. She steadies herself with one arm braced against brick, coat heavy, spine angled forward like a held breath. The lamp flares cold behind her, bleaching the puddles and throwing the pipes into hard relief. Rust blooms along the bend where someone scratched the question—Where Vojta?—letters bitten deep enough to survive weather and time. I remember another roof, years back, when the same question traveled by mouth instead of metal, whispered and already stale. Now it gurgles with runoff, seeps into my ankles, pulls my balance down toward the gutter. The open case at her feet yawns empty, hinges shivering in the wind, suggesting something checked, or taken, too late. Factories brood in the distance, their stacks mute witnesses. I rewind the moment: the lean, the reach, the search tightening the shoulders. The roof offers no answer. Vojta stays gone.