You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry)

by Andrea Gibson

Of course beauty hunted me. It hunts everyone. But I outran it, hid in worry, regret, the promise of an afterlife or a week’s end.

There is no escaping the magic now. Beauty caught me and never let me go. And the thing about the world record is—if someone breaks it after me, and they will break it after me, I will love that so much that without even trying, I’ll break it again.

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

I love you because we have both showed up to kindness tryouts with notes from the school nurse that said we were too hurt to participate.

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

Say it was the turbulence of long distance instead of the baggage unclaimed.

I see I wasn’t running from the war back then. I was running from the peace. The love I did not believe I was worth.

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

The psychology manuals say no one really wants to die. They want relief. They believe they will never find it in this world. That belief could be right. Or wrong. One would have to stay to find out.

I could show you where the lakes on this planet are buried. How you do not need light-years to reach them. The dark years work too. Sometimes better. Sometimes grief is the fastest route to truth.

If your wounds are still open, trust they are doors to an answer, and walk through. What if we don’t have to be healed to be whole? There are holes in every inch of the fabric that makes me who I am,

a difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one.

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.

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.

thorns were my very first heroes because they did nothing with their life

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

We need so much less than we take. We owe so much more than we give.