roadside rainbow remembrances

A beloved poet
composed their last verse today
Rarely is my heart this shattered
Over someone I never met
But somewhere between parasocial
And beautiful kinship
Rests the relationship
Between a reader and a poet

They beckon us into depths
Of their own making certainly
But also into the depths within ourselves
They playfully and pleadingly
Pull us in
To dance intimately with our own joy
And vulnerably with our own sorrow

They request that we stare back
Into the reflection of our pain
Until that siren no longer holds sway
And they remind us that
When love takes our breath away
Sometimes...just sometimes
It's not tingling and shooting stars
It's the cry of our broken hearts

And we are strong enough to carry this
To dedicate ourselves to lessons learned
To let the echoes of beautiful lines
Glow in our searching minds
When we carry fragile feelings
With the tension they require
We are also strengthening our wings

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The only thing that made sense to me in the wake of learning about Andrea Gibson's death today was to write. I hope that we don't waste time. I hope that we write. I hope that even if it takes a million poets to fill their footsteps, we all do what we can nurture what they taught us. My thoughts are with those who knew them in real life. I can only imagine what lovely human beings you are.

"I love watching people pull over on the side of the road to take pictures of a rainbow."
- Andrea Gibson