You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry)

by Andrea Gibson

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

because where I come from beauty is in the eye of anyone who sees what’s missing but can’t stop pointing to what’s still there. If there’s no definition for love yet— I think that’s a good one.

Friend, you are who taught me that a difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one. Joy is just easier to carry than sorrow, and you could lift a city from how long you’ve spent holding what’s been nearly impossible to hold. This world needs those who know how to do that. Those who can find a tunnel with no light at the end of it and hold it up like a telescope to show that the darkness contains many truths that can bring the light to its knees.

To be human, it seems, is to know your true self only as well as you know a galaxy you’ve never been to.

I don’t know how to save the world, but questions themselves are telescopes. I know there is medicine in knowing how much we don’t know. I know there are answers in being awestruck.