Andrea Gibson — Poet Laureate of Colorado, award-winning spoken word artist, and author of seven books — wrote the prose poem below for their wife during the final months of their journey with ovarian cancer. Like so much of Gibson’s work, it explores grief and death from a remarkable perspective of joy and hope.

The text is below, but if you’re able, it’s even better if you can click through to hear the poem read by Andrea on Instagram or on their Substack.

If you have access to Apple TV, an Oscar nominated documentary about Andrea and Megan called Come See Me in the Good Light was released last year and is an extremely worthwhile watch. Much like the play, it gives insight into one person’s cancer journey with immense tenderness, joy and hope.

Love Letter from the Afterlife by Andrea Gibson

My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before.  Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

Andrea passed away on July 14, 2025. Their wife, poet Megan Falley, recently appeared on an episode of Anderson Cooper’s podcast about grief, All There Is, to speak about her experience of loss and the legacy of Andrea’s incredible perspective on life and death.