Small Stories: Dance of the Tenacious Shingles

I tend to anthropomorphize things. Here is an example:

There is a little leaded glass window in an alcove next to the desk in my study. Some time ago, while gazing distractedly through it, I noticed that a small line of shingles on the roof of the house across the street had come loose and were a little cockeyed. The next morning when I sat at my computer, I glanced out to find that they had slid a little further.

Day by day, I watched as they edged slowly down the roof, sometimes mere centimeters at a time. It eventually became a game. Before I looked out, I'd try to guess where they'd be, and whether they would have fallen. After about a week, the shingles had crept all the way to the very edge of the roof. The next day it rained, and when I looked out, they were dangling by a corner from the gutter. Through the next week of wind and rain they clung there, and I kept glancing over, expecting any second to see them flop wetly to the porch below. One day when I looked out, they were gone. I checked the surrounding area, but didn't see them, and I assumed they'd been found and thrown out.

But the next day, someone had stuck them right back where they started, on the roof. How strange. Since there was nothing to hold them there, they did their little dance once again, but this time when they fell, they never came back.