We Do What We Do in the Dark

by Michelle Hart

She had the perpetual feeling of sneezing without being blessed.

She wondered whether the man was a writer himself, a trauma survivor, or a time traveler. Getting off at her stop, she thought, Those might all be the same thing.

used to think I was going to make comic books. But I’m worried I’m a better reader than I am a writer. Maybe I should have gone to art school.” Underneath the desk, the

“Maybe,” Mallory said. “I like your accent. Is that a weird thing to say?” “It depends on how much you like it.”

Mallory felt herself start to sweat. She hadn’t believed her pursuit might ever bear fruit. She was embarrassed, as if she’d written an intense journal entry that she now had to read aloud.

The woman and her husband—“we” was her only acknowledgment of him—spent

There were whole years of my childhood that, when I look back at them, were devoted to trying to make her smile.

It felt as though the earth itself knew about their affair, but no one living on it did.