My all time favorite poet passed away this week and I have fifteen years of love for them and their work stored up into all of these formative moments in my life that I wanted to share. 

I was first introduced to Andrea Gibson when I was in high school, catholic high school. I took a creative writing class where my teacher introduced me to Andrea’s work. Andrea is a queer, non binary writer, poet, and speaker. Growing up in a sports-centered family, words held a lot of power but not a lot of responsibility. Early on I loved their poem, the Nutritionist, which helped make me feel so much less alone, struggling with my depression from a young age.

“But knowing as bad as it hurts,

our hearts may have only just skinned their knees

knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be cominglet me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be hereasking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.”

Even when I was actively religious about six years ago, Andrea’s mention of god was a god I really wanted to believe in. With Andrea’s identity, I was surprised that their poems had god in them at all, a god that sounded far kinder than the one everyone else was talking about. I will never forget seeing Andrea perform in North Carolina, I felt so much. I really wanted to talk to them after, and I did while I asked them to sign a poster for me. What do you say to someone who inspired you to read and write for yourself, who made you cry at their words, who felt like you felt? I knew they had probably heard it all from their fans but I was the most star struck I have ever been. It was the closest to feeling holy I had ever felt...in connection with this beautiful person. 

"I said to the sun, 

'Tell me about the big bang.'

The sun said,

'it hurts to become.' "

And on the way home my religious friend said, “Wow that was amazing. Too bad she is probably not going to heaven because she is gay.” Whoa….I did not know I was queer yet myself, but that comment always stuck with me. Watching this incredible person go up there, share their poems, their heart… and you still leave the function condemning them to hell based on their sexuality. 

"Once I found a butterfly’s wing on the sidewalk.

I wanted to keep it but I didn’t.

I knew there were things I should never find beautiful. 

Like death.

And girls."

It is a really weird feeling to have someone that helped you through your darkest moments die from cancer so young. The person that has somehow lit up every other corner of my life and led me to where I am now. What scares me the most is that I will never hear any new poems from Andrea ever again. They are gone, at forty nine years old. And now their life is taken from them when they used to write about wanting to die. I think anyone can relate to that fear. The one where you might not want to be here anymore but then not having the choice. Or the illusion of choice.

"Tonight I’m catching nothing but the lightning bug

My body is a mason jar

transparent as a jellyfish

I wish for a heart you can see straight through

for a voice that glows in the dark"

Andrea Gibson lived a life where their words touched people deeply. They touched me to my core. They kept me alive some nights. Ex friends and lovers of mine will recognize their name. They inspired me to believe in more, to articulate myself better, and to try and be here with all the feeling. I want to leave you with this poem of theirs that has stayed with me the most. 

"The soul misses the unforever of old age, the skin that no longer fits.

The soul misses every single day the body was sick, the now it forced, the here it built from the fever

What else could touch a screen door and taste lemonade?

What else could come back from a war and not come back? But still try to live?

When a human dies the soul moves through the universe trying to describe how a body trembles when it's lost, softens when it's safe

How a wound would heal given nothing but time. 

Do you understand? 

Nothing can fathom the landscape of awe, the heat of shame. 

The fingertips pulling the first grey hair and throwing it away.

I can't imagine it, the stars say.

Tell us again about goosebumps. 

Tell us again about pain."

- Stephanie Kaiser, Founder