Kristina Marie Darling
Jane Dark Explains Infidelity To Her Mother
You know how it is between women: first honey, then smoke. That’s how you can tell a rifle’s been fired not just once, but twice. A small tremor in the hand and a flash of light that catches in the trees






(As a girl, I had an entire room of what I called “spells,” but in reality they were mirrors




My first understanding of violence came when I sent a pebble straight through the polished glass, just to see it splinter--)




What I’ve been trying to say is, you didn’t raise me to rent a room in some other woman’s house.



The husband was just a spectator, watching her chip every one of the dinner plates, claiming each time she didn’t mean to. When she bites her lip, he can’t tell a lie from the truth. Which is to say, he couldn’t even tell the two of us apart.




That night I found her in my closet, looking through the drawers, trying on my clean white shirt.




She carried no purse, and no luggage, because everything she needed was sitting right there on the shelf