specimen pressed
no. 05 · h-coll.
a low rose, never taller than a folded coat, with petals the colour of an old paper shade lit from inside. it grows where light arrives sideways: through a roof-window, through a broken slat. the smell is faint and warm and reminds the visitor of someone else's grandmother.
it flowers when there has been no rain for a fortnight, which in an attic is most of the time. found in the high corners of the tower, behind the trunk on the stairs, sometimes pressed inside the pages of an old photograph album. not to be confused with the common garden rose, which it does not resemble.
field note — i smelled one for so long the smell became the shape of the attic itself.