A review by chelseyalex
You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson

5.0

This collection is gorgeous! I burst into tears reading The Year of No Grudges but there are so many that took my breath away including Queer Youth Are Five Times More Likely to Die By Suicide, To Whom It Definitely Concerns, Instead of Depression, Homesick: a Plea for Our Planet, and others!


When I don’t believe in myself,
I try to remember I have walked

on water, like, seven-hundred times
in Maine in the dead of winter.
Where I come from, you can drive

a pickup truck from one side
of the lake to the other, and people
have an unusually high quantity

of missing teeth and fingers,
but you can still count on them
to buy whitening strips and wedding rings

because where I come from
beauty is in the eye of anyone who sees
what’s missing but can’t stop pointing

to what’s still there.
If there’s no definition for love yet —
I think that’s a good one.

Lines from The Year of No Grudges that will be stuck in my head forever.