when the pretty girl bleeds out onto a sheet of paper, the shine of her blood is so beautiful it distracts all the boys. she writes sad poems for every one of them and they take turns guessing who each is about, and she no longer cries at night.

when the pretty girl scrapes her knee on the pavement and cries, the boys pick her up because she is bleeding, and surely hers isn’t the kind of pain you could waste on a scraped knee. they fix her up and buy her a brand new pen, and she continues writing sad poems for them. she sometimes cries at night.

when the pretty girl gets a boyfriend…

still, all the boys look at her. he is no longer his own person, but a trophy acquired on a shelf of people, the lucky ones she writes poems about. she writes love poems and sad poems, and every boy tells himself that they are about him. she usually cries at night.

the pretty girl stays pretty, and her poems stay beautiful

until one day she isn’t.

when the pretty girl gets her first wrinkle, she is no longer the pretty girl. her poetry was once a token of her youth, but she has now placed it on her shelf amongst other trophies. still, the sad rhymes map the lines upon her face, and she doesn’t know how to stop bleeding.