An orange telephone

After six years the pacific blue phone has been allowed to retire. Battery health at seventy-one percent, camera lens scratched from years of pockets and bazaar counters (five and a half years, if I am precise, which I am trying to be). It knows the pandemic in its photo roll, and the early drafts of books I no longer write the same way. I put it in the drawer next to the retired drive, a small museum of objects that worked until they almost did not. The replacement is an iPhone 17 Pro Max in cosmic orange. I own eleven black garments for every colored one, and still I chose orange, a fact I cannot fully explain except to say that the year felt heavy and the orange did not. On the kitchen table it looks like a citrus that learned electronics. Friends have already commented. I have nodded as if I planned this personality.

The camera housing sits raised on the back like a small, quiet piece of architecture. The first thing I pointed it at was the ridge, an hour after a downpour had gone through and taken the haze with it. From the balcony the telephoto brings the mountains in close enough to feel neighborly, ridgelines sharp against a sky that is usually kinder than my schedule. I am still learning where my fingers rest without summoning a feature I did not request. For now the phone mostly takes pictures of the cezve, the shortwave dial, and the courtyard at dusk, proving that a loud color can still keep shy habits.