FIRST LOVE by ANDREA GIBSON

I don’t think I ever really kissed 

any boys. I think my tongue had 

just been punching their tongues.

But as soon as you loved me

all my callous went away.

My hands so soft it hurt to pray.

You’d pick me up at my Catholic college

and I’d sleep for hours until we reached your house.

The first time in my life I’d ever rested, 

the first time I didn’t have to play a role

I’d never really wanted to get.

That’s the medicine it is 

to be finally seen by someone.

I’d crack a smile and you’d point to my chest 

and say, What just broke?

I’d throw my body in the river

but you’d say my name right

and I’d become a stone that skipped.

Do you remember the first record 

where we didn’t have to change 

the pronouns to sing along? We’d gone 

so many years without music

that knew us. Music that knew you

could arch your back and I’d have proof 

that the earth was round.

Bless who we were then.

Bless who we still are. 

My straight friends tease me

because all my best friends 

are my ex loves, 

but a wise heart told me 

it’s the most tender part 

of queerness—how we’ve all lost 

so much family when we find people 

we call family, we’ll do almost anything 

to not let go. Thank goodness 

for the ice storm that trapped us 

in that cheap hotel where I drank an entire bottle 

of something awful, 

and with my fisherman’s accent 

that I hadn’t yet chased away, I finally told you

I’d loved you since we were 15

playing basketball under the street lights

beside the poorest part of the sea. 

The ice storm froze the world outside

into a photograph of the past

while I kneeled down and kissed

my future onto your kneecaps.

Two decades talking to Jesus. 

That was the first time 

I heard him talk back.

Months later, church bells ringing 

through my dorm room, I wrote my senior thesis 

about you and no one knew

how hard I was praying

to stop hiding myself in metaphor,

to be brave enough to carve the truth 

into the chapel door. 

Only you can imagine 

how much time I spent

picking out my outfit the night 

you took me to my first queer bar

in Portland, Maine––the biggest city 

I’d ever walked through. I was so excited 

and so scared that we’d be spotted,

or killed, on our way inside,

we sat in the parking lot 

for over an hour till I changed my mind 

and you drove me home, 

mascara pouring down

my brand new boy shirt.

I couldn’t 

have guessed there’d ever come a time

like the winter we traveled to Blue Hill

to visit your mother. 

Asleep when we arrived after midnight, 

she’d lit our room with candles and rested 

a joint in the center of the bed.

Neither of us were any good at smoking

but we pulled her welcome into our lungs

like it was one hundred years of oxygen.

Up until then we didn’t know 

anyone in the world 

would celebrate us 

wiping the steam from the glass

to see each other blushing

in the same bathroom mirror in the morning. 

I was thinking about that a few months ago

when I was invited back to my catholic college

to read my poems for the first time. 

You, in the front row,

near the nuns and the school president 

and the teacher who had given me an A 

on the manuscript

I had been too terrified 

to write your name in.

Mandy, I know so much has not gotten easier. 

I know so much has not gotten better, but 

that moment knocked the wind out of me––Time 

finally being the kind of father we all deserve.

The world turning its porch light on for us.

It was so bright 

I could feel the freckles 

on my 15-year-old face 

warming in its glow. 

I could feel hope 

traveling backward 

to find us, 

to whisper into our chests,

There will be music for you 

one day.

- andrea gibson