Andrea Gibson

yeah you know you would think it would drive us insane that thing and maybe it is but maybe it's just the perspective on it and I know that you know to think about just dissolving um it's it's like whoa but it throws your eyes open like when you think about that it doesn't shut you down you know you're you're just like whoa and I imagine birth feels the same I've

never given birth, but that just, I think of those two things similarly of this, whoa, what is this life?

What is all of this?

I'm having another hot flash.

I'm so excited.

Yes, you asked me to read one and I have one here.

That's actually going to argue with everything I just said.

Unless you have a specific poem.

That's so sweet.

Thank you for telling me that.

So this poem I actually wrote years ago and I wrote it when I was really sick with Lyme disease and I was really struggling to make peace with the body that I was living in.

And it is not actually maybe what I believe spiritually, but my therapist told me that in some spiritual communities, they believe that when a human, when they die, the soul actually longs for the body.

And she told me that when I was in a lot of pain and I imagined my soul longing, I couldn't wrap my head around it.

So when I can't wrap my head around something, I try to wrap my heart around it by writing a poem.

And so this is called Tincture.

Imagine when a human dies, the soul misses the body, actually grieves the loss of its hands and all they could hold, misses the throat closing shy, reading out loud on the first day of school.

Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe, the loose tooth, the funny bone.

The soul still asks, why does the funny bone do that?

It's just weird.

Imagine the soul misses the thirsty garden cheeks watered by grief, misses how the body could sleep through a dream.