You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry)

by Andrea Gibson

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

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.

NO SUCH THING AS THE INNOCENT BYSTANDER Silence rides shotgun wherever hate goes.

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.

INSTEAD OF DEPRESSION try calling it hibernation. Imagine the darkness is a cave in which you will be nurtured by doing absolutely nothing. Hibernating animals don’t even dream. It’s okay if you can’t imagine spring. Sleep through the alarm of the world. Name your hopelessness a quiet hollow, a place you go to heal, a den you dug, Sweetheart, instead of a grave.

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.

I love myself is often spelled g-o-o-d-b-y-e

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

GOOD GRIEF Let your heart break so your spirit doesn’t.

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