Andrea Gibson
Grief, in particular, has always sealed my words behind a lump in my throat. When I heard the news that Andrea Gibson had died this week, words felt beyond me.
So I drew a portrait of them.
And then I turned to Andrea yet again to articulate the hard stuff. I spent the whole day reading and rereading their poetry, and copied down poems that resonated with me.
But still I had trouble deciding what writing or poem to pair with this illustration. You see Andrea is/was an admired poet and the world is lucky to have so many of their words to hang onto.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that perhaps I was most inspired by Andrea’s humanity, vulnerability, love drenched POV, and their courage to become softer and softer and softer.
And if I were to try and put that into words, I guess I would say that Andrea touched me just by being.
RIP you holy blinking star, Andrea.
PS: It was lovely to be subscribed to Andrea’s Substack. Meg (their wife) recently wrote a post saying that there was more writing to share. So if you’re not already, you may want to follow along there.