x.
the climb up is shorter than the descent was. the building does not insist that everything be symmetrical; it merely brings you to the top by a different route, more direct, like a confidence given on the way back. the stair tapers; you bend a little to pass.
the attic is what the building has kept. not a museum — nothing here has been catalogued — but the small accumulation of things that did not need to leave. a chair without its mate. a trunk with the lock long missing. a folded cloth that was once a curtain. each item retains the small dignity of having been useful at least once.
a round window at the gable end lets in a quality of late afternoon you had not noticed coming on. you came in at one hour; the building has been keeping its own. you are surprised, mildly, to find time has been moving without your supervision. it has done so kindly.
in one corner: a stack of photographs, edge curled, taken by hands you will not learn the names of. you do not lift them. they were not left out for you, exactly; they were left out, and you have passed them. that is enough.
the attic is the building's quiet memory of itself — of the visitors who have come through and left a small thing behind, sometimes intentionally, sometimes by the simple fact of having been here. you walk among them. you leave nothing. that, too, is allowed.
at the head of the stair down, you pause. the procession will return you now to a room you have already seen. the building has been preparing the lighting. you can feel it — the soft adjustment of warmth, the very small turning-up of the lamp in the room you began in.