We Are All the Same in the Dark

by Julia Heaberlin

Texas is a beautiful poison you drink from your mother’s breast; the older you get and the farther you run, the more it pounds in your blood. And then there is my own legacy in this town. I’ve been told I’m special, a brave girl,

The truth is, I’m not brave. I’m not even that willing. I’m just more afraid of one thing happening than the

other.

You are turquoise that’s more stunning with a flaw—

You are Empusa, the shape-shifting Greek demi-goddess with a leg made of copper—from

You are kintsukuroi, a broken Japanese pot more valuable after its cracks are repaired with gold—

He paints, holds up the acrylic shell to her eye, and paints again. He dips into the gold, the blue, the brown. “Green is more than green,” he mutters. “Blue is more than blue. Everything on earth, more complex than it appears.”

EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing—a technique being used aggressively on cops and combat veterans with PTSD.

“You know the reality of that better than anyone. What’s coming is always unimaginable, and by that, I mean just that. It cannot be imagined. What’s coming never acts or behaves the way we think it will.”

Photophobia, a sensitivity to light so extreme it is physically painful.

What he found is a freak show—the offspring of Daenerys Targaryen

if she mated with her brother and one of her dragons.

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.

Lovely thought.