To love and be loved.

What can I tell you about Andrea Gibson aka Andrew Gibby?

That they floated into my heart on a paper plane called pole dancing to gospel hymns over a quindecennial ago.

That they never left because I never wanted them to.

That they tear me open ever so often with their brutally gentle truth-telling.

That the scars that form remind me over and over to love no matter what; myself, others, life.

That it is always worth telling; my joys, my aches, my rage, my adorations, my fears; my stories.

That they are an old dear friend that doesn’t know I exist and whom I don’t know.. a soul I will probably never know more than I do the poems they wrote, not in my lifetime, and that is still enough for me.

Because there is deep abiding love nevertheless and absolute eternal gratitude to a human being who chose to share and bare their soul so that little old me could come across them and finally be tethered to the belief that what I am is enough.

I still belong.

“…The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said

The trauma said don’t write this poem

Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones

My bones said “Tyler Clementi dove into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.”

My bones said “write the poem.”

- excerpt from The Nutritionist by Andrea Gibson | The Madness Vase

For all of that and so so so much more, my loyalty lies with AG.