To the little girl who loved spending hours with a pencil in hand, making loose lines on paper turning it into something beautiful, this is for you. I know you loved the way your pencil would dance delicately like a ballerina across your clean white paper. I know that before beginning  masterpieces, you admired the blank beauty of the pristine, white paper. Pure and unmarked. 

To the little girl who dragged her pencil not only creating a physical image, but painting a mental story, this is for you. Taking your pencil and turning the blank, unmarked nothing of a piece of paper and turning it to something of value and beauty. Something of worth. Something that will tell a story with the images you create. 

To the little girl who made mistakes through her drawings, this is for you. Taking the smudges from your eraser and creatively covering them with new work on top. Although beneath those mistakes still remained, they were given new purpose. There truly was no way to get rid of them, only cover them and love them. 

To the little girl who grew up and stopped drawing and focused on the “more important things” in life, this is for you. I know you’ve distanced from swirling your pencil along your paper, but have taken up a new form of expression. I know you’ve moved from paper and pencil to a much more lasting and complex form of art. Your skin now resembles a canvas with silver paint that always draws red. Taking your once pure, unmarked body, as you did white paper, and turning it into bleeding beauty.

To the little girl inside who is screaming for help, this is for you. I know your pain, I see it. These mistakes don’t define you though. They are mistakes with stories. Mistakes you don’t have to creatively cover and be ashamed of. They show your strength and tell your story of what you’ve gone through, what or who hurt you, and how you beat it.  

To the little girl inside that will never understand this form of art, this is for you. You grew up and reverted back to your childhood ways, but with a different approach. The irony of this love of art is cruel, but almost necessary. Once taking a pencil to paper, you now take a blade to pale skin in an effort to create something beautiful and better again.