She was always riddled with ink. It filled the crevices of her palms and followed the veins down her arm. It bled into her heart and her heart pumped it out and it reached every nerve ending in her body. It filled her brain with ideas and she wrote them down:
A girl, alone and misunderstood, but not really sad.
A girl, surrounded by people and really sad.
Music in the bones.
Wars within the head.
Thunderstorms and stars.
A girl, alone and misunderstood and surrounded by people and not sad, but really sad.
An unforgivable heartbreak because there is no one to forgive.
A very, very passive love.
A girl.
A girl.
She wrote them down and told herself she would share them one day. She would wrap them up in paper and binding and actual printer ink rather than her bloodstream.
When she grew up--not old, but up, but smart, but mature--she would share these things.
Now she's pacing from room to room and sitting in desks and listening to good words and she's trying to grow up. She's making it. She's almost there, she's almost there. Just another three years, three years.
She is growing up.
And when she is up as words are old, she will open her veins and her heart and her brain. They won't be ideas and she won't need to write them because they will be written. And people will read her words all over the world and that's a lot to hope for, but when she grows up . . . ,
- S.H.
