Andrea Gibson — The Death of a Poet
Last Monday, I had a break between clients. I took a moment to look at Instagram, and there it was. The news that Andrea Gibson had died. I couldn’t keep scrolling. My heart ached. My eyes filled with tears, and I started to cry. I hugged my knees to my chest and wept. I stayed there for a while.
For those of you who don’t know, Andrea Gibson was a highly-acclaimed, genderqueer poet. It’s hard to summarize the enormous impact they had on so many. I know I am not alone in feeling their loss deeply. I don’t usually mourn for people I don’t know personally. However, this loss is different.
I was devastated, I felt like the world, the universe was a sadder place because Andrea is no longer in it. My heart hurts now as I am writing this. Someone so special, so vulnerable and honest, someone who taught me by simply living their life . . .
A journalist described Andrea as “a poet of love, hope, and gender identity.” All that is true, and they were so much more than that. Their spoken words were slow, deliberate, and filled with insights and meaning. Their vulnerability touched me in the deepest places. They put words to feelings that I had rarely had before.
Two of their poems come to mind.
In “Love Letter From The Afterlife,” a poem Andrea published in December 2023 says:
“My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.
When I talked to a friend of mine about this, she said, it is the paradox, when someone dies we carry them with us always, they are forever there, in our heart. And I know that to be true from the people who have died in my own life. Andrea helped me find words for that.
In “My Gender is the Undoing of Gender," they said:
“If someday I have a mustache, I know I’ll be comfortable wearing a dress. And if I ever have a beard, I’m certain I’ll be the prettiest girl I have ever been.”
These words explain so much to me about my own gender, about the way in which I walk in the world; it gives images to feelings, emotions, and sensations.
Andrea’s poetry slows me down, it helps me to breathe, and gives me permission to step more fully into who I am. Their poetry gives me hope for love as a collective.
Andrea lived a life of truth, of courage and vulnerability, of softness and strength, one of questions and clarity, one of beauty and pain. In the face of hate, Andrea chose to love.
When we lose someone who spoke truth to power, justice to cruelty, and embodied Divine love – what do we do with the pain, with their absence, with the torch they carried?
May we have the audacity to carry their legacy despite the way the world tries to shut it out.
Many blessings,
Chani
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