Roll

Roll - 336 Words

Kevin Foster

Lit only by the dull glow of icicle lights through the drawn shades over her window, she slouched on the floor at the foot of the bed she slept in as a teenager, gazing at the recently uncovered roll of film, her legs bent awkwardly and propped onto the lip of the drawer where she had come across it. She was surprised that the room had remained largely untouched since she officially left home eight years prior and embarrassed by the state of the bottom drawer of the dresser, the junk drawer, a reminder of the organizational deficiencies she still struggled with. Still, she wondered how a roll of film had escaped her, buried with insignificant papers and nicknacks – she had always felt that remembering was a grave duty to which she had been called and she did it in a regular and intentional manner.

She did not know which major period of her life the pictures would give her a glimpse of: perhaps a girl's night from high school, the amateur photography phase in between high school and college, or her admittedly foolish party phase when she began to split away from her parents, thinking that her values would end up somehow different and that they had not done the same or worse. She imagined everyone she had ever known crammed inside of a film canister, waiting to be sprawled out onto glossy paper by a drugstore employee. Her stomach was warm with and full, but she still felt the same ache that had plagued her since she left them all here; before she stranded herself. The film canister suddenly felt tremendously heavy in her palm; she let it drop to the floor and roll out of her sight under the bed. She stared at the patterns in the stained oak dresser. She remembered that they were downstairs. Slowly rising to her feet, she pushed the creases out of her dress and following the sounds of laughter downstairs, she slid back into the current.

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