You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry)

by Andrea Gibson

know most people try hard to do good and find out too late they should have tried softer.

think we make gods who look like us for a reason. I think, in spite of it all, we trust we can be believed in.

none of us have ever been our bodies. If we were—how would we fit in each other’s hearts?

Regret is a time machine to the past. Worry is a time machine to the future. Gratitude is a time machine to the present.

All time is quality time. Don’t abandon your chisel believing it’s not.

you and everyone you know have hourglass figures. Each breath, a falling grain of sand.

Silence rides shotgun wherever hate goes.

a meadow thick with raspberry bushes whose thorns were my very first heroes because they did nothing with their life but protect what was sweet.

Who, more than the earth, has bled for us?

The earth is the right side of history. Is the canyon my friend ran to when no one else he knew would echo his chosen name back

soldiers who don’t want to be soldiers have control over almost nothing except for their aim.

I pray to a different god every single day because I pray to me, and sometimes I’m clear and sometimes I’m scattered as the ashes of my friends who were still alive last

How did you come to believe that hating yourself would protect you from other people’s hate?

It’s been weeks since the first breath of winter, and the geese are just beginning to make their long trip south. They fly in a perfect > but they do not think what is ahead of them is greater or less than what is behind them. That, you are certain, is the definition of peace.

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?