35mm

by Melissa Llanes Brownlee

Every inch of the film from our wedding is sitting in a trash bag in the back of our closet. I wanted throwaway cameras and you insisted on 35mm film and rental Leicas on the tables as party favors, an expense I wasn’t willing to give in to but you persisted, so I did. You were never worried that they might be stolen or damaged, losing us the sizeable deposit, which we could have used to just pay a damn photographer in the first place, but you wanted authenticity and truth. So now, we have canisters of film in a black plastic sack on the floor of our closet, because you wanted to develop them yourself, but then you forgot, even though I remind you, again and again. I buy a kit to process the film into digital images, finally unveiling our wedding as seen through the eyes of our friends and family. The truth of us is captured in each frame, over and over again, making me wish I had left it all in the trash bag on the floor in the back of our closet.

6S

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer, living in Japan, has fiction in Milk Candy Review, Claw & Blossom, Bending Genres, Micro Podcast, (mac)ro(mic), Complete Sentence, The Daily Drunk, Sledgehammer Lit, Necessary Fiction, Have Has Had and elsewhere. She was selected for Best Small Fictions 2021. She tweets here and talks story here.