A faded photo, a Mona Lisa smile — a penny for your thoughts, Dad?
An old colour photo of my dad from the 1970s inspired this one-liner piece of microfiction. He had a faraway look in his eyes and a Mona Lisa smile on his much younger face.
As art lovers have done for centuries with Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Mona Lisa, I wondered what my dad was thinking in the photo?
Why was he smiling so subtly? Was it a smile?
Sobering Selfie
I would’ve liked to use the faded photo of my dad in the microfiction – after all, it was his Mona Lisa smile that inspired the writing – but for the sake of his privacy, I used a doctored selfie instead.
It was sobering staring at the two photos to realise my dad was younger in the 1970s than I am now!
In microfiction or flash fiction, the writer offers a sentence or two, maybe a paragraph, and leaves the before and after narrative, motivation and denouement to the reader’s imagination.
So microfiction is like an instant caught in time. Or like a faded photo.
© 2018 Robert Fairhead
N.B. This microfiction piece is also shared on the Tall And True writers’ website. And you might like to read another blog post about microfiction: We Need To Talk (November 2017).
About RobertFairhead.com
Welcome to the blog posts and selected writing of a dad and dog owner, Robert Fairhead. A writer-editor at the Tall And True writers' website, Robert also writes and narrates episodes for the Tall And True Short Reads podcast. In addition, his book reviews and other writing have appeared in various print and online media, and he's published several collections of short stories. Please see Robert's profile for further details.
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