You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry)

by Andrea Gibson

So sometimes you look like a human scribble, like a two-year-old has colored you in, like you have too many feelings to stay inside the lines of your own skin.

I was running from the peace. The love I did not believe I was worth.

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

Turns out, there are no benefits when the co-pay is your life.

I’d be bodiless, a shadow in reverse, a patch of light made by the darkness I escaped.

Sometimes grief is the fastest route to truth.

I understand being wooed by the finish line of sadness.

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?

The thing about loving a stranger is you can guess, but can never be sure, what they are privately surviving on their journey to help others survive. I’m just so grateful for him, you kept saying. I’m just so grateful for him.

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

Let your heart break so your spirit doesn’t.

Everyone can see who they were supposed to be. It’s the readiest grief in the world.

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. And you refuse to let the hands of your clock curl into fists to fight the lessons off.

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’m not about to spend eternity burning in the lie that holy and perfect are the same thing.

A promised land is not a promised land if I can’t keep learning.

I know there is medicine in knowing how much we don’t know. I know there are answers in being awestruck.