The Curved Glass

I mounted the dark mahogany desk and confronted the brass-rimmed magnifying glass resting across an open lined journal. Its thick lens trapped the afternoon light in a gleaming semi-circle. Stepping onto the crisp paper page, I leaned over the heavy metal frame to peer down through the convex glass. The ruled blue lines beneath warped into vast, bowing chasms, and an errant speck of graphite swelled into a jagged black monolith. I shifted my boots along the paper margin, deliberately altering my angle to observe how the curvature bent reality. A small lens, yet it commands perspective.