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 ******

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