You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry)

by Andrea Gibson

Queer youth are five time more likely to die by suicide means: I sneak into fascist sleepovers and sharpie my pronouns onto the faces of senators who voted to criminalize my kisses when I was nineteen.

In any moment, on any given day, I can measure my wellness by this question: Is my attention on loving, or is my attention on who isn’t loving me?

You’re talking to someone who wore a lifejacket to the baptism because I knew—I knew what they were trying to do.

I know someone, somewhere, is pointing to a speck of light that is our tiny blue planet and saying, I bet that planet is capable of sustaining life. And for now, they’d be right.