i. when i was 19 and in a very hetero relationship, i fell in love with Andrea Gibson.
ii. we were poor so i was going to community college and also working a full-time job. i was miserable. the nicest thing that happened to me during that time was that someone bought me a free coffee. i had been sobbing in the corner of the library. she said you look like you needed help. i was so sad at the time that i was looking for "the sign". almost like a mantra, i'd say things like if there's a nice sunset, i won't kill myself tomorrow.
iii. you know, in all that time, i never wanted anything. the idea of desire was so foreign to me that i couldn't conceptualize a favorite color. what is want in the voidspace?
iv. andrea was the first, is the thing. i found their work on button poetry. i watched a poem once and then twice and then sat back and thought to myself - what i had been writing was not poetry, it was reaction. what andrea was writing was poetry. i knew it had to be, because it burst inside of me. i looked down and a hole had torn open. there was nothing for it. i put my hands inside the wound and started to pull.
v. it was slam poetry and then pretentious poetry and then esoteric poetry and then the black mountain poets and then tender buttons and then back to slam again and then back to the classics and theory and the academic shit and then finally thank-god understanding started dawning and then upwards into contemporaries and inwards into why aren't i writing something real and then realizing i never understood anything then crying about three syllables that don't sound right and then sunning myself outside of the emily dickinson house and then back to slam and back to the roots of it and backwards into -
vi. and the joy! holy fuck i wish i could tell you about it. on the back of ink came life. it was community and safety and pushing limits. it was saying oh yeah no i'm gay and oh shit i'm nonbinary. it was a cliche; life like a map just exploding. because i knew - i had my thing. wherever i went, so too would come writing.
vii. on saturday i reached 7,700 poems on here. i made myself a gin and tonic to celebrate. i have been writing seriously, almost-every-day, sometimes multiple times a day - for over 10 years. i started this, became this - because i saw someone stand on stage and say something i knew to be poetry.
viii. andrea died today, july 14th, 2025, at the age of 49.
ix. i will never have the words for what they gave me.
gummygunk
kianamaiart
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
theartofmadeline
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
