Andrea Gibson Quotes

I wish for a heart you can see straight through, for a voice that glows in the dark, and a few really good friends to say, “That’s the way to go.

Rocking Chair

Sad is.
Scared is.
That is all.
The rocking chair I live in rocks like a paper boat. Sometimes I am all words, and no boot.
No muster. No yes. All lag and tired pray,
all miss my hometown. Miss the woods
and the quiet porch and the talking slow.
I caught the snow on my tongue.
Snow angel, I.
My heart a blue lamp.
My mother calling me home.
We cannot be called home enough times in our lives.
Dear lonely,
what is your name?
I will open my front door
and ring it through the streets.

Do we really believe our need for Prozac
has nothing t do with Fallujah,
with Kabul, with the Mexican border,
with the thousands of U.S. school kids
bleeding budget cuts that will never heal
to fuel war tanks?

My mother used to knit my mittens too big so they’d still fit me when I grew. I wore them and looked like who I wasn’t yet. I feel that sometimes when I’m writing poems — like they don’t yet fit. Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?

The closest I might ever come to war is the turning of my head. Apathy is intimate, like singing a lullaby to a grenade, then drinking yourself to sleep while it sneaks out the window to explode a boy.

I still love you like moons love the planets they circle around,
like children love recess bells.
I still hear the sound of you
and think of playgrounds
where outcasts who stutter
beneath braces and bruises and acne
are finally learning that their rich handsome bullies
are never gonna grow up to be happy.
I think of happy when I think of you.
So wherever you are I hope you’re happy,
I really do.
I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight
I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking
I hope your lungs are open and breathing this life
I hope there’s a kite in your hand
that’s flying all the way up to Orion
and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out.
I hope you’re smiling
like God is pulling at the corners of your mouth,
‘cause I might be naked and lonely
shaking branches for bones
but I’m still time zones away
from who I was the day before we met.
You were the first mile
where my heart broke a sweat,
and I wish you were here;
I wish you’d never left;
but mostly I wish you well.
I wish you my very, very best

If you were to press your heart close up against somebody else’s heart eventually your hearts will start beating at the same time. And two little babies in an incubator, their hearts will beat at the same time. Love that. So if you have somebody in your life that is prone to anxiety, like myself, and if you happen to be a calm person, you could come up and hug me heart to heart and my heart hopefully would slow to yours. And I just love that idea. Or maybe yours would speed up to mine. But either way, we’ll be there together.

And I wasn’t gonna be just ok.

I was gonna be perfect.

We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction.

I suppose we wear our traumas the way the guillotine wears gravity; our lovers' necks are so soft.

There is no weapon more dangerous than a wound.

I wonder how many people have died driving while checking how many likes their Facebook status got. I wonder how much life has been lost in the bloody ditch of approval, how many skulls have swallowed windshields trying to see if they are worthy of applause, worthy of their own heart's hungry beat.

I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside
Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside
Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house
But my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing

Tell me how they will no longer
have to hide beneath burkas.
How you will wrap them in lace
‘til they are all as conveniently rape-able
as women in the States.

I ask you about being happy the same way my high school friends ask me about being gay. 'So what do you people do exactly? I mean, how do you do it?