Atlanta Black

Good Light by Andrea Gibson

I. 
Though I don't remember, I remember my birth
was my first yes. Though I was pushed, yes.
Though there was screaming, yes. Though the light hurt, yes.

I wanted the yes to last forever so badly that I told myself:
We're built like drums. We couldn't make songs
if we had never been hit. It was a desperate theory.

When they told me god was always watching 
I said, Who wants to worship a diary thief?
I didn't dare say who wants to worship anyone

who would see everything and just sit there doing nothing
while the devil flossed his teeth with the bow
of my prettiest violin?

They told me the same thing
about Santa always watching and I didn't mind
because he was bringing presents;

god was only bringing life,
which I was told was a sin to return--
even if it didn't fit.

My yes never fit into the no of this world.
I was just a little girl trying to get rid of the just and the little,
got rid of the girl instead.

Got rid of my yes trying to make a no so big
it could go back in time, swallow everything that happened
that should not have happened. 

And that's how I lived. That's how I'd been living.
Decades of no no no no no no no no no.
And that's okay--an accordion could not make a song

if it never closed.
But then I met you

and I started feeling myself open, 
started feeling my yes coming back,

the reverse of being haunted,
like taking a deep breath

and pulling the fog off the glass.
My love, my yes,

do you know how many times a day
my gratitude frames your autograph?



II.
Come see me in the good light.
Come tell me what you tell the truth. 
Come trouble me.
Come lightning strike.
Come read out loud what I can't yet pronounce of my own life. 
Come wiser than the past. 
Come make me make you proud.
Come hope too much. 
Come with all your ghosts. 
Come clown around when the timing's bad.
Come empty-handed.
Come full of regret.
Come know where it hurts when it doesn't hurt. 
Come count to ten with your eyes closed. 
Come find me hiding in the place I know you'll look first. 
Come promise me the world.
Come trust me to do my best even when I don't. 
Come ask me to give you everything I have.
Come knowing I'll give you my word 
       that if you fall in the forest when there's no one around
                 I'll be there before you land.
                 
Come kind, come searching, come lost.
Come let me find you out. 
Come with all your baggage mailed to our house. 
Come be everything you are, my love. 
Come love this world, come hate it too.
Come undone, come falling apart.
Come every age you have ever been. 
Come tantrum in the grocery store. 
Come screaming for what's sweet. 
Come willing to spill, willing to stain 
       the windows of the angry church.
Come nervous brave.

Come tender as the trees 
        forgiving the books
                 for asking to be made.
                 
Come with all your beauty leaving evidence behind,
       your fingerprints all over the thing that changed my mind,
                that made me better than I was.
                
Come love, make me better than I was. 
 
Come teach me a kinder way 
        to say my own name.
         
Come share my parachute.
Come let me share your storm.
 
Come hush the weatherman when he calls it bad weather.
Come light as a feather on the bird that stuck around 
        to see the snow. I used to drive along the coast of Maine
                 searching for the fog.
  
Come with me to where the sea
       lifts up into the sky just to slow us down.
Come make it count, our finding each other
       like we've found god,
come believing we can heal it all, even everything.

       I know how much the pain of this world weighs
       but I can still tip the scales in light's direction
       
       whenever I have your name on my tongue.
       Whenever you say love is a ladder
       
       to our highest selves, I say, May our falling
       be the most beautiful climb.
       
       In the good light, and in the lightning strike,
       come become beside me
       
       till I find your first silver hair in our tub.
       Till I find your last silver hair in our tub.