Come, love, make me better than I was.
Come teach me a kinder way to say my own name.
—Andrea Gibson—
Today, I learned that Andrea Gibson died.
A poet, a radically authentic human, Gibson touched many lives—including my own.
Gibson’s poetry shed light on beauty in challenging times. Often, their poems would remind me of the days after my mom was killed, how there was something so holy in the unending tears that I could only describe the sensation as utterly beautiful.
To love that much is to (eventually) lose much more:
Another conversation.
Another laugh.
Another possibility for repairing an old wound.
Another sarcastic comment. (And another.)
Another eye roll.
Another sneaky moment where one of us is crying and we’re not sure why.
To love is to meet at a crossroads. The kind where we make decisions about where to go next. Where we might decide to go in separate directions, yet still find our way back. The kind where one day we will follow a whisper or a light, and not return.
To love is to live so loudly that the echoes of what else could have been ring from the stars.
To love is to sit in dark corners and unsteady tables because that’s where we know we can be ourselves.
To love is to understand that none of this is forever, but we will want it to be.
Thank you Andrea for poetry that reminds me of that, including this:
Just to be clear I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there’s gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts.
—Andrea Gibson—
What is remembered, lives.
xo Irisanya