You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry)

by Andrea Gibson

and I 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.

beauty is in the eye of anyone who sees what’s missing but can’t stop pointing to what’s still there.

how you tore the covers off every morning like a kid unwrapping a gift.

And no, it is not the weak who try to clock out early. It’s people who are desperate to go home.

I only call death when I forget how to speak eternity’s language, forget that to run out of time is to run into the truth that none of us have ever been our bodies. If we were—how would we fit in each other’s hearts?

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.

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

If we never deny the inevitable end of the story, we will write it more beautiful while we’re alive.

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. Grief astronomer, adjust the lens, look close. Tell us what you see.

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.

Do you know sometimes when gathering nectar, bees fall asleep in flowers? Do you know fish are so sensitive snowflakes sound like fireworks when they land on the water? Do you know sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift apart? Do you know whales will follow their injured friends to shore, often taking their own lives so as not to let a loved one be alone when he dies? None of that is poetry. It is just the earth being who she is in spite of us

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

but there is a test we can all take to find out the future. It’s called the test of time. And what you do is you live until you die.

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?

When you are trapped in a nightmare, your motivation to awaken will be so much greater than that of someone caught up in a relatively pleasant dream. –Eckhart Tolle

You adored that she ate doughnuts for every breakfast, called naps snoozers, built her countertops from old chess boards.

the straight folks in my life don’t always understand why so many of my exes are my closest friends but how my therapist says it’s the most beautiful part of the queer community—how we’ve all lost so much family when we find people we call family, we’ll do almost anything to not say goodbye.