Portrait On the Fourth of July

A girl in the crowd takes a selfie. Her tam o’shanter sparkles because of the fireworks going off in the background, and because it has glitter. At the gates of Moscow weary French troops run away hands over their ears, as Tchaikovsky fires his righteous cannons. The girl with the cell is as pretty as her friend beside her, but her friend outshines the tam o’shanter as if it were just an ordinary beret. She has sapphires in her eyebrows. Kids in earshot of adults ‘wow’ or mouth age-appropriate obscenities. The limp body of a teenage messiah is elbowed and pushed around by his disciples. Several rows back, a woman is laughing as she cranes her neck skyward; from the chin up, she looks like Greta Garbo, only she is short and fat. Rockets fly like fan-dancing ostriches. The truncated 1812 Overture burps to a close. My lens can’t capture the woman or the girl, or her friend who now all shine like diamonds. I can’t fit all of this into 12 mega pixels. The night eventually stops throwing missiles at the moon, the girls, and women fizz out, the kids continue to sizzle until they are led away by dark-eyed dreams.