Monologue, Photo Prompt, Short Story, Writing Challenge, Writing Prompts

My Daughter’s Hair

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Written for Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction
Challenge using the image below as inspiration.

© Klara Kulikova @ Unsplash

I’ve done this a thousand times. Twist, pin, twist again. But my hands know today is different and I have to get this just right.

She sits still for me, the way she has since she was small enough to stand on a kitchen chair to reach my shoulders. Now I’m the one reaching up, and she’s the one who has to bend her neck for me to fasten the pearl hairpin …. the same one her mother wore and her grandmother.

The light through the trees keeps moving. The shadow of a fern slides down her back like it’s alive, like it knows things won’t be the same without her. I watch it fall across the knob of her spine and think: we made that spine, her mother and I. We made her.

She doesn’t know I’m crying a little; you can’t see tears from behind. That’s the whole gift of this angle …. I get to fall apart without her having to comfort me on the one morning she should be allowed to just be nervous, just be young, just be getting married in four hours to a man I like more than I expected to.

“Tighter,” she says, and I pull the bun snug. Somewhere outside a bird tweets his approval.

I used to hold her whole head in one hand when she was first born. Now I hold a fistful of dark hair and a bobby pin between my teeth …. this last small use of my hands before I hand her forward, into the arms of the new favorite man in her life.

NAR©2026
#MFFFC

This is “Dance With My Daughter” by Jason Blaine

Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge #385

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated and may not be used without permission. Thank you for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

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