“Things I Believe in More Than God” by Gage Anderson
Last week my best friend and I got fancy drunk. Which means we drank too much wine instead of too much vodka. We are more than a few glasses in, right at the point of wine drunk between feeling really sexy and really sad. So we get all existential, and she asks me if I believe in God.
And that is an interesting question because I definitely used to but now I am not so sure. Like, I believe in God, but I can think of a number of things I believe in more than I believe in God, like
I believe sunrises are better than sunsets in every way.
I believe that my Zodiac sign has about as much to do with my character as Hulk Hogan has to do with Pride and Prejudice.
I believe in convoluted similes.
I believe ghost and angel are the same word in two different languages.
I believe that Murphy’s law is a melodramatic way of saying that gravity is strongest at rock bottom. So when everything that can go wrong does, and your body is heavier than your muscles can muster, stand up.
It can only get better from there.
I believe that you can’t buy happiness but that shit is not free.
I believe that the quickest way to any person’s heart is honesty. I realize the irony in saying that because
I believe the quickest way to any person’s mind is fallacy.
I believe secrets are lies we tell quietly and I have a lot of secrets. For someone who believes in the power of the truth I spend a lot of time trying to avoid it. I grew up with an “overactive imagination” which is the pessimists’ way of saying that my mind ran on stories, so when the truth was too boring I would find the excitement in it and leave the rest behind. It wasn’t always true, but there was always truth in it.
I believe in irony like I believe sunroofs are most beautiful when it’s raining.
I believe in shitty first drafts. Of poems; love letters; life stories. The thing about a first draft is that it implies a second. It can only get better from there.
I believe in second chances. It can only get better from here
Before we started dating, a girl I knew read the first draft of a poem that went like this:
To say that I lived and
damn if more of my
scars are intentional
than not.
I am still alive
She said I was a poet who wrote too loudly. Asked me why my ink was so mean.
I told her I believed in second chances. It could only get better from there.
And it wasn’t true. But there was truth in it.
I believe that not all things get better. But not all things go bad.
Last week my best friend asked me if I believe in God.
Yeah. Yeah, I do.
And it wasn’t true. But there was truth in it.
About Gage Anderson
He/Him/His
Gage Anderson was born and raised in Centennial, Colorado, and garnered a love of storytelling from the early age of ten. His academic studies of poetry and literature have taken him around the world and back to share tales, moments, memories, and anything else he can translate onto a page. While he works as an English tutor teaching basic grammar and vocabulary, his love of language extends far beyond utilitarian syntax and ventures into the fanciful, the fantastical, and the mystical. Gage believes that poetry is the closest he has ever come (and ever will come) to performing real magic. His poems have been featured in numerous University publications including Capillaries Journal, Bricolage, and AU Speculative Fiction Journal. When not writing, Gage seeks to push the boundary of what storytelling is and what it can be by experimenting with non-literary media such as game design, oral storytelling, and collaborative storytelling.