In this episode of The Hive Poetry Collective, Julie Murphy speaks with Bay Area poet Grayson Thompson in a powerful conversation on identity, embodiment, and the long arc of becoming. Drawing from his recent collection, A Congregation of Alligators, Thompson’s work moves between the cosmic and the intimate—tracing gender, grief, survival, and self-love with striking imagery and emotional precision. The episode also features a moving reading of “Love Letter from the Afterlife” by Andrea Gibson, deepening the conversation’s meditation on loss, presence, and enduring connection. Together, the conversation explores the tensions between naming and knowing, the body as both wound and home, and what it means to reclaim tenderness in a world that often demands erasure.