The Reservoir Under the Roof

The rain arrives like quiet carpenters, measuring the gutters, tapping the eaves. It builds a clear room above my ceiling, a reservoir where the night leans in to drink.

In the morning, I hear it shifting its weight, slow syllables of water in the pipes. I think of old cities learning to float, of hands rinsed in buckets, of roofs that remember.

I climb the ladder and press my ear to the tank. The sound is a meadow folded in tin, grass after a storm, a shy orchestra rehearsing with only breath and wire.

When the sun comes, the water becomes a map. It shows the long hair of the day, the curl of a cloud, the small anonymous birds that pass without signing their names.