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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?
From You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021) by Andrea Gibson. Copyright © 2021 Andrea Gibson. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Imagine, when a human dies,
the soul misses the body, actually grieves
the loss of its hands and all
they could hold. Misses the throat closing shy
reading out loud on the first day of school.
Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe,
the loose tooth, the funny bone. The soul still asks, Why
All of my pain is a spider
I’ve learned not to crush
with the heel of my shoe
but to guide with a page
of my journal
into an empty glass.
I ask questions about
its life, its purpose
as I walk careful
out to the garden and rest
it down on the earth.
My pain—how happy
I wasn’t, by any means, a natural.
Was not one of those wow-hounds
born jaw-dropped. I was tough in the husk.
Went years untouched by rain. Took shelter
seriously, even and often especially
in good weather, my tears like teenagers
hiding under the hoods of my eyes,
so committed they were to never falling