Silent Path Rewound

Silent Path Rewound

Moss still steams from the night rain as if exhaling something it can’t give back. The inscription on the stump feels raw, freshly scored into its rings—an act against the forest’s hush, a refusal to let the question rot unasked. Whoever burned those words didn’t linger; their heat remains only in memory, cooling on the bark like breath gone thin in cold air. Near the glowing cluster of fungi, a camera lies yawed in surrender, its strap curled like a slack tether. Every surface urges a pause, but the trail is already ghosting backward into mist, its curves recalling footsteps that now feel borrowed. Each time I stare, I imagine the scene in reverse: the butterflies folding, the lens closing, the knife lifting from wood. No voices carry here, only that urgent plea—WHERE VOJTA?—scratched into time deeper than moss can mend. He’s not in these frames, and the absence keeps streaking hotter than any ember.