Come See Me In The Good Light: And Suddenly Nothing In The World Was Dying
by Heesun Park
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
If you’re a writer or at least remotely interested in writing, there’s a 75% chance you’ve encountered at some point in your journey the YouTube channel “Button Poetry.” And, if you’re an active member of the online community, there’s a 95% chance you’ve grown to loathe it.
Spoken-word poetry has become the subject of mockery within recent years. Those who love it really do love it, but those who can’t stand it absolutely can’t. In a way, spoken word is the modern art of literature, or the poetry form of the archetypal theatre kid. Too dramatic, too intimate, too passionate.
And, as Ethel Cain said it best, “we are in an irony epidemic.”
Directed by the critically acclaimed Ryan White, Come See Me In The Good Light (2025) is a documentary following the journey of two poets navigating a devastating cancer diagnosis. It explores the personal lives of lovers Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley—detailing how they fell in love and their current domesticity—and more. The documentary is as much of a meditation on the power of love and writing as much as it is a meditation on mortality.
There’s a part of me, a large and twisted part, that is inclined to believe this documentary is staged. That this is a completely self-infatuated piece of work about a couple way too perfect and way too in love. About a form of writing that is useless in this dying world where people are, in fact, dying.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
That part of me wants to find poetry futile. To believe it is an exercise in vanity as much as it is an exercise in profoundness. That to wrap your life up in pretty sounding words and insist the world stops spinning just for a second, just for you, really is “doing too much.”
But then I see the tender touches between Andrea and Megan, their moments of laughter in spite of it all; I see Andrea’s dedication to their craft even when the final curtain call seems to be creeping around the corner, and I’m reminded of how beautiful life can be and how wonderful it must be to see your life as that beautiful thing filled with meaning and so much love.
And that large and twisted and jaded part of me suddenly becomes so much smaller.
Come See Me In The Good Light is a documentary that makes me want to believe. In love, in writing, in poetry, in death, in life, in meaning. It is a documentary that makes me feel, for one hour and forty-nine minutes, that truly nothing in the world is dying.
I was first introduced to spoken word poetry in high school. My creative writing teacher would assign us to find a performance on Button Poetry that struck us and we would spend time in class discussing why we enjoyed it and how it made us feel. After watching Come See Me In The Good Light, for the first time in eight years, I finally went back to that channel. Scrolling down their page, I saw all of the old poets that once filled me with wonder and, not to my surprise, Andrea Gibson was there, too.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute