triangular · roof · last swept never
where the two slopes of the eaves meet in their seam and the joists run to nothing, there is a corner barely wide enough for one's knees. an old wire birdcage stands in it, its door open, its perch unweighted. a single peacock feather lies along the joist, dust-grey now along its eye.
the trunks went elsewhere. the christmas box migrated three corners ago and never returned. only the cage stayed, because the cage was once the centre of the room when the room had a centre.
no cat goes here; the slope is wrong for shoulders. a child once stayed in it for an afternoon with a torch and a notebook and was certain, that night, of something they could not afterwards write down. the keeper does not sweep it. the keeper does not know whether the cage door was ever closed.
field-note: a single mote, lit from the gable louvre, hangs in this corner at three in the afternoon as if pinned.