never tell a sad girl that she is an artist
or she will spend the rest of her life crying out for the moon
and pressing flowers into books
she will hide stashes of poems under the mattress like a junkie
and she will try to start fires with her tongue
her fingertips stained blue from the sadness in her spine
her eyes will become maps of new cities
but when she closes them
she will be like that girl in the old photographs again
with the floral dresses and tragically fair hair
who held hands and cried
and felt no need to write about it