I Almost Didn’t Say This is a book of poems and essays about what it means to live in a body that has been watched, misnamed, and asked to shrink—and what it takes to stop shrinking.

Moving from childhood to adulthood, these pages trace identity, belonging, and sovereignty through adoption, Blackness, queerness, love, rage, ritual, and return. This is a collection for anyone who has learned to be “good,” quiet, agreeable—and is ready to tell the truth out loud.