Father flattens old photos, my boyhood hair white as snow.

He looks at my dark head, asks again if I color it. All my friends have been gray for years.

I consider the truth: I’m expelling inner darkness that beckons demons. It exits through my hair.

“No, Dad. It’s natural.”

Jeff Stone has published several short stories and many poems. He has three novels in various stages of completion and loves learning too much for his own good. Albert Camus said fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. Dark Hair is a short piece of fiction that resides somewhere in between.