attic · 4 panes · onto the slate roofs
built in later than the rest of the house, when the roof had already settled into the shape it wanted. the carpenter had to cut the rafters and apologise to them. the dormer leans about half a degree off true, in the kind way a person leans toward you to hear.
what you see, almost entirely, is roof: a long slope of dark slate falling away into the chimney of the next house, then the next, then a far roof where pigeons go in winter. you can sit on the floor and the roof fills the lower pane the way a sea fills the lower half of a window onto the sea. there is no ground in view. there is only weather, and tile, and one chimney that smokes in the afternoons. the eaves drum when it rains.
the catch is a small iron hook on a chain. the dormer opens out, not up, and it must be propped with a wedge of wood the carpenter left behind. nobody closes it last; the dormer closes itself when the wind veers north, and somebody in the morning notices.
field-note · attic a tile slips, perhaps once a year. you hear it before it lands; the lead gutter catches it.