Blake Williams

We Were Young Until We Were Broken Blake Williams

For lovers of poetry in the tradition of Ocean Vuong and Rupi Kaur, here is a new, muscular, and defiantly queer collection of poems about how sex, cities, and religion can make saying "I'm thankful for my life" the hardest and most joyful thing a person can say. In We Were Young Until We Were Broken, Blake Williams's body, city, and relationships function as stilettos-each of these structures in his life are strong, beautiful, and too often broken by the weight he places on them. The title of this book, written by an author who is the product of adoption, suggests that some people never get the chance to be young, broken as they are at birth. These poems are rich with laughter and desire, too. When Williams wants to be touched without having to take his clothes off, he kisses men in bathroom stalls where the confining space that constrains their desire is what allows him to experience desire more fully. When the safest space for his body to find love is as the peripheral character in an intimate chapter of a married couples saga, or where his first one-night stand in Los Angeles is as revelatory as it is confusing, Williams is exploring how desire maps a person's personal experience of a city. In this book, there are maps for how you find cocaine, how you find 6 am pillow talk with strangers, how you find the love of your life, and, possibly, how you lose it.