If you haven't heard of Andrea Gibson, that is all about to change

A poet and LGBT activist of utmost sincerity, bearing it all for the world to see and hear. I can relate to a lot of the experiences Andrea's writings touch on:

Growing up in an extremely religious background and finding yourself wandering around like a lost, black sheep until one day you find a pasture where there are herds of all varying hues on the color spectrum. And suddenly there comes a day when you realize the grass doesn't need to be greener nor fence painted with a fresh coat of white - a day when you take take off the glasses with lenses shrouded by societal expectations. And you see the world in truth, and light and love. Places where diversity is celebrated, differences cheered, instead of sneered and hated.

From one poet to another

After recently reading one of Andrea's profound poems and seeing the visuals which accompany it, I wrote Andrea a message, that swiftly turned into a short paragraph of poet-to-poet prose:

I just heard your reading of Your Life and my first thought was “when words of another take your own". I am speechless in all the two-wrongs-don't-make-a-right kind of ways. Because it's tragically sad that others have suffered in order to create something as beautiful as this - this beautiful piece of pure magic. And in spite of that suffrage you strung those struggles together on a thread like popcorn at Christmastime.
What a truth to be told, what a power to behold.
Your words, the worlds ears - it's a love story of the best kind. ❤️

• Poet-to-poet, B.faye to Andrea

Here a link where you can read the poem and hear it:
https://genius.com/Andrea-gibson-your-life-annotated

Here is the youtube link to watch it as a video:

Here is the original poem by Andrea Gibson, entitled "Your Life":

Your Life

It isn't that you don't like boys.
It's just that you only like boys you want to be.
David with his jaw carved out of the side of a cliff.
Malcolm, who doesn't have secrets, just stories.
He owes no one.
Chris, the basketball hero with the tick, blinks fifteen times when he makes a shot.
You spend hours blinking in the mirror, pretending you're a star like him.
Mary Lavine calls you a dyke.
You don't have the language to tell her she's wrong and right.
So you just show up to her house, promising to paint her fingernails red with what will gush from her busted face if she ever says it again.
You're in the seventh grade.
You don't even know you want a girlfriend.
You still believe to much in the people who believe in Jesus to even feel desire to its hell threat.
You just want to kick your desk on the way to the principal's office, slouch in detention,
want to cut your hair and spit out whatever you don't want in your mouth, your own name, even.
Skirting around the truth.
You don't yet know the boys are built in their confidence on stolen land,
but you do worry the girls might be occupied with things you will never understand.
Won't ever, ever be good at.
You take one pretty step and feel, like you're pouring bubbles into your own bloodbath.
You don't want a soft death.
You want a hard life that is your life.
Your life at the locker room that doesn't stop demanding to keep your eyes on the floor.
Your life at the prom, where you run home and a snowstorm, chugging your last pair of heels in a snowbank, realizing you are the only boy you want ever wanted to tear off for.
Your life, the first Christmas you spend alone.
The years you learn to build your family out of scratch.
Your life when someone drags you from a restroom but the color of your coat.
Your life every time, airport security screams "pink or blue, pink or blue," trying to figure out what machine setting to run you through choosing your life and how that made you to.
Someone often finds it easy to explain your gender by saying you are happiest on the road when you're not here or there, but in between.
That yellow line running down the center of it all like a goddamn sunbeam.
Your name is not a song you will sing under your breath.
Your pronouns haven't even invented yet.
You're gonna shave your head, drive through Texas.
You're gonna kill your own God so you can fall in love for the first time.
They're gonna keep telling your heartbeat is a pre-existing condition.
They're gonna keep telling you are a crime of nature
and you're gonna look at all your options, and choose conviction,
choose to carve your own heart out of a side of a cliff,
choose to spend your whole life telling secrets you owe no one till everyone, till there isn't anyone who can insult you by calling you what you are.
You Holy blinking star.
You highway streak of light,
falling over and over for your hard life,
your perfect life, your sweet, beautiful life.

-Andrea Gibson