No One Can Know

by Kate Alice Marshall

But people needed stories to make sense of things, and she had learned to give them what they needed.

She’s the kind of person you call beautiful because she is thin and has good teeth and an expensive haircut.

Worry when it looks perfect, because that means you’ve caught up with your own ambition and judgment. Dissatisfaction is the engine of creativity.

She gritted her teeth. Talk about a thing too much, you’re obsessed. Talk about it too little, you’re hiding something. And no such thing as a middle ground. She could never get it right. That perfect balancing act of the right way to speak, to be, to look, to feel, so your innocence could be confirmed. Once you were tainted you could never get clean.

You lose a dream and it starts to hurt to even remember you ever had it.”

But no one could ever really know another person, could they? Everyone had secrets.