Mira Gonzalez’s exciting follow up to her award-nominated debut is a Molotov cocktail of angst and irreverent missives coming from the lonely side of existential purgatory—like Sylvia Plath and Megan Stalter had a baby.

A double book, this collection includes Gonzalez’s first collection, I will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together, and a new, fiercer collection of previously unpublished work as well as illustrations from the poet. This poetry lives in the uncomfortable space between sincerity and self-defense.

Through honest, raw, and simple descriptions, these poems don’t offer lessons so much as evidence: evidence of being alive in a body that wants things it doesn't know how to ask for, evidence of loving recklessly, and evidence of anxiety that knows it is being watched.

This is the poetic powder keg, where the self-deprecating sass of Lily Allen meets the uncomfortable honestly of Girls. Favoring confession over redemption and honesty over spectacle, I Never Said I Wanted to Feel Good offers intimacy that feels almost accidental. Mira Gonzalez serves a moment in time and that moment is now.