Visitation (for Andrea Gibson)

I wake in the night to the knowledge that you are here

if you are anywhere, you are everywhere now

and your presence writes itself onto my soul

my body throbbing with a pain like being punched 

right in the bullet hole that pierced my heart 

like a brother in the back seat of the station wagon 

who won’t stop the game where he has me by the wrists 

saying “stop hitting yourself” as he manipulates my weedy limbs 

and like a marionette I’m pummelled by familiar hands 

I awake thinking I’ve gone deaf in one ear forgetting 

I’ve stuffed an earplug in only one side to keep the spiders at bay 

having woken in a startle sleep as I lay down trying to remove 

the sensation of insects and arachnids walking into my mind 

staying deaf to the messages on the right side only 

leaving the left side - the side that is left - vulnerable 

so you crawl into the sinister ear and whisper 

your expansive love straight into my limbic system 

your queer joy for living with that crooked smile 

the one you laid onto the lips of my cis male lover 

when he startle woke from a meditation visit yesterday 

saying “wake the fuck up you sleepers and get your living on!” 

I’m blessed by your Santa Claus visit racing the world 

to gift us all in that one hard night, hard candy spilling 

from your joyous fists stuffing our brain stalkings to the brim 

with sweet sweet tidbits, magic words, small toys 

that will be broken in a matter of hours

lost between the corduroy couch cushions of time 

only to be fished out like a princess pea 

when we wriggle in discomfort at something absent 

something that we were sure was right here a minute ago 

car keys promising to start up that vehicle that will carry us 

somewhere, anywhere into the fresh night 

toward a promise of love and first kisses on a slough bank 

reflecting moonlight even as the forest burns 

and in the knowledge of your ever present absence 

that when the sun rises revealing the oil spill on the water 

even in the disaster of it all, the iridescent shimmer 

of petroleum rainbows grace us with hope 

in the face of the unthinkable

~Andrine de la Rocha    July 2025