"and I think we make gods/who look like us for a reason."

This line struck me especially. I wanted to make a post about it, but then I realized I wasn't sure if my formatting was correct for the post since I can't make it too small due to my own accessibility needs. And so, I looked up to see if I could find an online version of it, and came across Andrea Gibson's Substack. Due to having found out right as I began reading this collection that they died in 2025, I expected to maybe find... some poems published there? Maybe even THE YEAR OF NO GRUDGES?

Anyways, I soon found it was littered with articles from Andrea Gibson's wife & widow Megan Falley, and my eyes caught on "I Thought Grief Would Destroy Me/Instead, I Made My Partner Into A God."

This was a beautiful read. It kind of felt insane that I accidentally found it when searching for something entirely different. It connected to that specific line in the poem I loved—Andrea saying that we make gods who look like us, and then their widow making Andrea into a god.

I've shared this before on Pagebound about my religion, Sikhism, and I'm going to just... directly quote myself here, "ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ/Waheguru — the word most used for "God" [in Sikhism] — means that which connects all living beings." My favourite thing ever is telling my friends that according to my own religion, they are all God. Each living being that has existed is God—we are all God together. I never doubt my belief in ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ, because God is all of us together, and therefore God does not have to be their own person I believe in if I ever doubt. ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ is simply the belief we are all connected, and my belief in that has never wavered.

This helped me a lot when I was younger, when I was grieving my Nanu (mother's father) that I never met. How do you grieve someone you never have met? Through the love those you that you love have held for them. I once wrote a poem about my grief on his birthday, when I was a lot younger. An excerpt: "I hope you're that little bird, chittering away/I hope what you're chittering about is us,/wishing you could have met your daughter's children."

This felt so much like Megan Falley's article on making Andrea into a god. Her viewing Andrea in the moon, in even the songs that were being played. What she said about this being a choice for her. She mentions Andrea loved quoting “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” She ends the article with "Listen, Einstein. Everything is a miracle./I’m certain of it."

Going back to the lines I quoted at the start from You Better Be Lightning, it's followed by the lines “I think, in spite of it all, we trust/we can be believed in.”

These lines in hindsight are beautiful tied together with the prose of Megan Falley. In spite of it all, someone made a god that looked like Andrea—someone believed in Andrea enough to make them into a god.

P.S. The lines were formatted correctly in my original post--I didn't even have to look it up. But isn't it so lovely I thought I had to? P.P.S. A summer thunderstorm started as I was writing this, a weather phenomenon that made me think of my friend who died a few years ago because she lived in a warm & humid environment. I like to think she was saying hi to me just like Andrea said hi to Megan.