All the Colors of the Dark

by Chris Whitaker

Saint wanted to ask what it was like, to lose the thing that defined you. But perhaps she knew: it left you someone else. A stranger you had no choice but to tolerate, and see each day and feel and fear.

“If you ever get the chance to make someone smile, or better yet, make someone laugh, then you take it. Each and every time,” Norma said.

At ten years old he realized that people were born whole, and that the bad things peeled layers from the person you once were, thinning compassion and empathy and the ability to construct a future. At thirteen he knew those layers could sometimes be rebuilt when people loved you. When you loved.

Even when we get out, we’ll take it with us, our own private black hole that’ll swallow every good thing.”

“Okay is the preserve of the uninspired, Patchwork. I’d rather live and die at the extremes than exist in the middle.”

“We look at others with fucking trivial problems, and we think how long they’d last with a taste of our childhoods.”