The black box camera flickers, startling a nearby pedestrian. Two ceramic seal statues fall cracking against the light brown dirt with a bell like ting, then shatter. New sorrow fills an old man’s face. Tears become permanently plastered in Polaroid pictures. Another click causes disparate pieces of blue and white porcelain to freeze in a photographic ether. One moment that should have been private, is now popularized.
The clicks continue within a small span of life. Phosphorous flashes catch two children playing tag. Silent laughter frozen within their playful smiles. It is a strange scene, fun overlapped with their shattered surroundings. Some beige broken stones stand scratched, some crack and crumble. Other stones lean at an awkward angle exposing their broken foundation as if they were works of abstract art. The chaos of glass clutters and cuts through the already decimated landscape. The history of explosions are etched in the bomb scorched earth, each one looking like its own Rorschach inkblot. Still, life continues, and as it goes on it is collected to be kept for the future.
Another click catches life in grey scale. Sobs are silenced by the medium but speak loudly through the picture. Grey gravestone glitter on a cold autumn day. Leaves fall and scatter across the dull background. People stand shoulder to shoulder, no breathing space allowed, and no one bothering to catch their breaths between the sobs. Several soldiers salute the dead man with rifles.
Click, click, click the camera cuts a swath through precious memories. Happy moments caught on colored film. What a sweet change for the tired device. New children born, new birthdays celebrated, smiles and hugs, hands clasped in surprised reunion. Time moves on as these moments are trapped within their own tiny two dimensional world.
There is no sd memory chip to save the photos. However, the spirit of every moment is etched onto the soul of the camera. The ******* box of a thing now collects dust. Still, the still photos lay dormant in an old album. Old hands, and smiles cease to be, leaving only altered shades of past memories. The little lies, truths not obscured but slightly altered by old color scales. Those moments are not immortalized only able to find a temporary respite from the void.