The Silent Canopy

The forest holds its breath, white branches heavy with the weight of unsent letters, a fragile architecture of frost suspended in the pale afternoon.

Nothing stirs but the memory of movement, a solitary fox track fading into the drift, while the sky thickens into a low, gray ceiling, pressing the cold deep into the roots.

Here, time is measured not by clocks but by the slow release of an icicle's drop, a singular, shattered note ringing out in the vast, unwritten page.