Dying is the Opposite of Leaving: The Life & Legacy of Andrea Gibson

On Monday, one of the world’s great poets and spoken word artists, Andrea Gibson, died at the age of 49. As a longtime lover of their work, I am both devastated that their soul no longer remains to create the aching, unyieldingly beautiful words for which they were known, and also eternally grateful to have lived on this earth at the same time that they did.

On paper alone, their collection of poetry is one that reads like a good cry after a difficult day. There’s heartache, of course, but also that unmistakable gratitude of feeling so deeply. I think often to the time they wrote,

“A doctor once told me I feel too much. I said, ‘So does god. That’s why you can see the Grand Canyon from the moon.’”

What Andrea created on paper was magnified and illuminated in their speaking of those words. If you’ve never had the chance to listen to Andrea read one of their poems, I strongly encourage you to do so. If you’re looking for a recommendation, check out their performance of “Royal Heart” from Button Poetry. It is in this poem where I once heard something that would be a constant companion on my journey of healing. It is something I know by heart:

“You can choose to bury your past in the garden by the tulips, water it until it is so alive it lets you go, and you belong to yourself again.”

Belonging to yourself. How soon we all forget that our ability to love each other rests constantly within our own understanding of self-love. I did bury my past, but never tended to the soil. I convinced myself it would be easier to live if I weren’t so tender, if I didn’t break so easily. I often found myself repeating Andrea’s words,

“I can’t live here. My body, I mean. I can’t live in my body all the time, it feels too much.”

This poem helped me find where exactly it was that I had even buried my past, my past which, buried beneath an unmarked grave, was just the parts of myself I tried to tear apart before remembering that all of who I have ever been and will ever be is sacred. Loving the parts of myself I hoped to forget was how I remembered that I was created to feel everything around me. And it is in feeling that I remember that I am intimately woven in the tapestry of all living things. To allow yourself to love without hindrance also leaves your heart exposed to everything that hurts, and there is so much courage in that. Andrea once wrote,

“It takes guts to tremble. It takes so much tremble to love.”

Andrea, the poet who died with stretch marks on your heart, thank you. Thank you from every queer kid who is falling in love for the first time right now, and every person who’s ever apologized for feeling too much, and every person who felt the words you spoke like molasses on a heavy heart, aching from everything it has ever felt while taking in the sweetness of trying again. And especially, thank you from me, for all those years ago when I couldn’t tell you how much you meant to me, so you just held me in your arms. Thank you for reminding me that I don’t have to try so hard to do good in this world, I only need to try softer. Thank you, Andrea. Thank you.