for andrea

I am still feeling Andrea Gibson’s passing. My heart is sunk in a hammock of it. My hands, dug into its earth. Social media is a snow globe of their light—each line of every shared poem is a soft flake falling. I knew they had reach but it is stunning to witness the corner of every page I know fold into love. There is a grief but also a peace in this collective sharing. It is the summer light before dusk. The sharpsweet of a cornfield on the breeze. My daughter’s mane curling in the heat. Andrea was all about living. I’ve never known of such a consistent light. I keep saying light because it is what I think of. And the moon. And getting to see how their wife Meg looked at them, listening, absolutely in awe. All love.

memory: August 2001 - Seattle. It’s the National Poetry Slam and I’ve traveled to compete on team Dayton. I was 20—not even old enough to get into venues so I could watch other bouts. But everyone could go to finals night, and that’s where I first heard Andrea on a microphone. I was startled and hushed by the urgency in their cadence. There was too much to say, and I dug that. Understood it entirely. Everything they said shot out in a spark. When they finished and walked offstage, I was stunned. I knew poetry, but not like that.

Their passing has shaken me at a time when it feels like it’s been years since I’ve stopped trembling. Anxiety is a big fat liar but it’ll stand in your doorway like the only truth alive. It’s a strange time, and stranger still to be wrestling with what is so unfamiliar, and strange on top of strange when this plane loses someone like Andrea. A poet passing is always an earthquake but this transition was not just about a poet, and it wasn’t just a shifting ground but rather whatever you call it when a soft flame erupts into sun. Whatever you call it when embers spiral up into the ether and refuse to extinguish and instead throw winks at every celestial body passed, and each mile of atmosphere climbed creates another umbrella of bright until we are all left honeyed in that good, good light.

In the announcement of Andrea’s victory, Meg shared that one of the last things they said was “I fucking loved my life.”

Those five words bypassed all flesh, muscle, sinew and reason to wrap around my bones. It is so honest. It is so them. It is the tense of the word love that guts me.

What can I say of my own life, in any tense? What might I say in the throes of my panic, with the numb hands and crushed chest?

I fucking loved my life.

It is all I’ve been able to think about. It is all I want to be able to say.

To Andrea, who changed everyone. <3