A Fifty from Nineteen-Eighty-Something

Back at the Sunday barakholka, among the same rows where old radios wait with their dials clouded, I found a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4. A heavy little cylinder of metal and glass, the focus ring smooth as honey after decades of someone else's thumb. The seller named a price that assumed I was in a hurry. I kept my face still this time; haggling goes better when the mouth does not announce eagerness. We settled closer to fair than I managed last season.

At home I mounted it on the D5 and pointed it at ordinary light. Lamplight broke into soft circles in the background. The apartment looked like memory without my asking it to: the edge of the cezve, the spine of a dictionary, the samovar's dull brass taking the evening in a slower register. The lens does not flatter so much as it consents to stay.

I decided some glass, like some sentences, improves with previous owners. Whoever turned that ring through winters I will never see left it easier for my hand. I left the fifty on the body overnight, a small dark weight on the table, and in the morning it was still there, ready, as if it had always meant to arrive in this room.