"EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE" by Andrea Gibson

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am sharing exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. The late poet Andrea Gibson's vital, existential poetry was influenced by her journey through cancer. She died last July and left a catalog of devastatingly beautiful poems. Here is "EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE."

EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE
by Andrea Gibson

--I meant I am willing to do anything to live.
Even leave this world forever.

Even build a new home atop a nebula, stick a straw
into a buried lake on Mars, get tipsy on anti-gravity
and invent new constellations walking the lines

between undiscovered stars.

When god pulls me over and asks,
Can you touch your nose? I could say,

What nose?

I'd be bodiless, a shadow in reverse,
a patch of light made by the darkness

I escaped.

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.
Friend, if you stay, at least we will be
together, and I have an extra straw.

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

is the fastest route to truth.

In addition to the straw,
I also have a slingshot that fires rock
bottoms directly at the sun until change

spills from its golden pockets--

that's how I got my hands on this
summer afternoon. We can do anything
with it. Sunbathe or scream or forgive ourselves
everything, most especially the thread we could not

convince to close our wounds.

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,

but pull the string on my back
and I'll say I LOVE YOU and mean it
whenever you want.

Come flood my home
with your eyes. I read that people scream
when they are in pain because screaming

actually lessens the pain--
anyone who asks you to hold your tongue
is asking you to hold the heaviest thing

in the galaxy. Forget them and remember you
can tell me anything about how hard it is
to stop flirting with your expiration date.

I understand being wooed by the finish line
of sadness. Infinity still sends me nudes
every day. I won't deny she looks amazing,

but I'm taken. My hand now promised
to writing every page of my story
except its ends. Friend, you are

who taught me that a difficult life is not less
worth living than a gentle one. Joy is just easier
to carry than sorrow, and 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. Those who can find
a tunnel with no light at the end
of it and hold it up like a telescope

to show that the darkness contains
many truths that can bring light
to its knees. Grief astronomer,

adjust the lens, look close. Tell us
what you see.

https://andreagibson.org/