You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry)

by Andrea Gibson

couldn’t figure out how to hold something and set it free at the same time.

To make up for lost time, you need only to put down the grudge you are holding so you can pick up the phone and say, How many days did we need each other at the same time without knowing it? Bitterness is the easiest way to leave this world having had only a near-life experience.

myself, If you are going to be anything in the world tonight, you better be lightning. You better find something in you honest enough to strike them.

Why are the keys to our future in the hands of those who have the longest commutes from their heads to their hearts?

your own story is one you aren’t sure you can survive, remove whatever sharpness you can from another person’s life.

You want decades of her teasing you for folding her sundresses terribly.

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?

What does it mean to be grounded in reality? How many senses have I had to shut down to have common sense?

What if the disco ball never stopped

how unready I was to let myself be loved by someone who thought, even at my lowest, I shined the sun—