So you tell yourself,

don't write about your sadness;
bottle it in
like the forgotten pills
in a medicine kit.
Bury yourself
underneath a bunch of blankets
and hope that the land mines inside you
stay hidden,
just as your scars stay hidden
beneath those bands.

Instead,

write the prettiest, emptiest,
make-believe poems —
nothing about the eclipse
constantly obscuring the sun.
Nothing about the random break downs
that no longer wait
for midnights and 3 ams.
Nothing about the aimless walks
and the piles of books
you can't read
because reading is exhausting
and everything is exhausting.

You tell yourself,

don't write about it, otherwise,
you'll be forced to trade places
with all kinds of sadness
you've secretly been hosting
all this time,
and they'll cut their way out
through the fresh stitches on your chest.
And you'll have to bleed
all over again,
and not just on your wrists,
but on your eyes
and on your legs
and your thighs,
down,
down,
dripping to these words.

So again, you tell yourself,
don't write about your sadness, darling —
don't write about it.

But then,
how do you stop writing about sadness
when you never run out of it
to write about?