Monochrome Monday: A lonely bench

I followed a fading path into the woods on a late spring afternoon and was slowly led into a half-hearted clearing. At one time, someone carefully tended this place, etching a trail through silent trees. It may have been love that moved them to do so or it may have been loss, or some salty mixture of the two, and a whisper of that remains in the benches waiting for visitors that come no more.

The woods have to be coaxed back constantly or they overtake whatever has been left to them, and so this lonely bench is caressed by the beginnings of thorn bushes and tentative ferns. Everything returns to its natural state.