Beneath the Lens

I slipped beneath the apartment door and walked down the brick alley to the neighborhood secondhand bookshop. Outside beneath a dark green awning, a low wooden cart stood loaded with salvage books and oddments. Climbing the spokes of the cart's iron wheel, I reached the lower timber shelf where a heavy brass folding loupe lay beside a clothbound atlas. I swung the thick round lens open until the casing clicked against its pivot. Looking through the curved glass, the worn weave of the cloth spine swelled into an intricate terrain of twisted linen cords. I crouched in stillness, studying the microscopic pattern held frozen beneath the brass ring.