We Are All the Same in the Dark

by Julia Heaberlin

If there’s terror in their lives, it shares their bed or their DNA. Odds are, they’ll keep it a secret until it’s wrinkled and dead.

I say that strangers are powerful. They can mark you in twenty seconds. They can rob you at gunpoint so you never feel safe again. They can mention you’re pretty at a party when no one else ever has, and then you don’t kill yourself that day or maybe any other day. It’s like a diamond tossed out a car window you were lucky enough to catch.

Pitying a girl for something wrong with her face is just one rung up from bullying her for it.

We are all the same in the dark. My mother said that to me when she kissed me good night. She meant that in the dark, all that’s left is our souls.

I was dragged to plenty of tent revivals as a kid. My soul is exhausted from being saved.