Hey, fam, it's Mia Mara. Welcome to the TransLash podcast, a show where we tell trans stories to save trans lives.

Well, in the face of erasure and violence, art is one of the most powerful ways that we hold onto truth.

And of all the art forms, poetry is an especially effective way to explore the complexity of trans life,

especially when it's written by trans poets.

One of the people who is doing so with clarity and depth is poet and photographer Golden.

Through words and images, they invite us into moments of softness, grief, intimacy, and joy,

as well as resilience. So I'm excited to share this incredibly rich conversation with Golden

about family, love, expression, and how we make it through.

Sometimes I can't even express or explain anything other than in a poem.

Now we're going to start out as always with some trans joy, but it's going to be a little bit different today.

It's actually more of a tribute to celebrate the life and legacy of Andrea Gibson,

a beloved poet in our community who died earlier this week at the age of 49. Andrea Gibson is known for writing unflinching and deeply personal poems about love, gender identity, depression, and their experience with terminal ovarian cancer.

They were a powerful wordsmith, who made so many in our community feel seen.

Not only that, Andrea was a champion of finding beauty in unlikely places, gratitude

in the hardest hours, and living life to the fullest. Quite simply, they were an example

for us all. Andrea has rightly been described as one of the great poets of the last two decades

and celebrated with countless honors, including an appointment

as the Colorado Poet Laureate. Here's Andrea reading from their poem, Love Letter from the

Afterlife to their wife Megan, just a few months ago in an interview with NBC Chicago.

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,

...