An elderly woman develops an old film roll from the 70s.

She reached the last two frames. The second-to-last was a blurry, overexposed shot of a forest canopy, likely taken accidentally as the camera was being put away. She sighed, prepared to snip the roll and hang it up to dry. Then she saw the very last image.

It was sharp. Impossibly sharp. The colors were true, modern, and saturated. It was taken indoors, clearly lit by a strong, artificial flash. Her hands, still wet with fixer, began to shake violently. The background was immediately, shockingly recognizable: it was her kitchen, taken from a high, strange angle near the ceiling, encompassing the familiar oak cabinets and the large, brightly patterned rug. The time stamp on the old film, the sepia tones of the 1970s, were gone, replaced by the unforgiving clarity of the present.

The subject of the photograph was herself.

She was sitting at her kitchen table, her back mostly to the camera, illuminated by the bright morning light streaming through the large window. Her head was bent in concentration over a cup of tea and a crossword puzzle—a scene from yesterday, or perhaps this very morning, captured without her knowledge. She was wearing the gray wool cardigan she had put on that morning.

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