Toxic relationships will never thrive in these pages.
There’s a new poet in town. On Nov. 7, Megan Fox released her debut poetry novel Pretty Boys Are Poisonous. The actor’s induction into the celebrity book club came at a buzzy time, as many stars have released memoirs and juicy short stories about their past relationships this year. Similar to some of those works, Fox left her heart and unbridled thoughts on the page.
Fox first announced her collection of poetry in August. “These poems were written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence,” she wrote on Instagram at the time, sharing the snake-pierced cover of the book. “I’ve spent my entire life keeping the secrets of men, my body aches from carrying the weight of their sins.”
That yearning for release can be seen in the 176-page book, where she details her own experience with toxic relationships and having her first miscarriage. In a Nov. 6 interview with People, Fox revealed that while some of these poems come from “lived experiences,” others stem from her “Grimm’s-fairy-tale” type of imagination.
Fox doesn’t identify or name drop anyone in the book; however, she recently confirmed her relationship with now-fiancé, Machine Gun Kelly, influenced at least one of her entries. The same day Pretty Boys Are Poisonous released, Fox told Good Morning America that she experienced the aforementioned miscarriage while engaged to the rapper.
“I’ve never been through anything like that in my life,” Fox said. “I have three kids, so it was very difficult for both of us, and it sent us on a very wild journey together and separately…trying to navigate, ‘What does this mean?’ and ‘Why did this happen?’”
Here are three heartbreaking poems from Pretty Boys Are Poisonous.
Fox revisits past trauma from an abusive relationship quite a few times. These recollections might stem from an actual experience, as Fox also told Good Morning America that she’s been in at least “one physically abusive relationship and psychologically abusive relationship” in her past.
She explores this theme in her poem, “Oxycodone and Tequila.”
“Today my sin was that I followed your friend to the dinner table / instead of waiting for you to lead me,” she wrote. Fox later added, “‘Oh you’re so pretty, everybody loves you, your life is so f*cking easy,’ you say as you slip your fingers in my mouth and try to rip my face in two / you hit me again and again.”
She later returns to that theme in an entry titled “Don’t Worry Darling,” which follows the morning after experiencing abuse.
“Mornings after you would hurt me / I would wake up and make your coffee / Put on a sweatshirt so you wouldn’t have to look at the bruises you left … If anything I’m lucky, imagine all the girls who don’t get hurt, for laughing at another boy’s jokes, how ineffectual and undesirable they must feel.”
Fox describes how an unnamed romantic partner acts like “an addiction” to her life. While there’s emotion bursting through every line of the poem, there’s a particular line that might reference her relationship with MGK.
Towards the end, Fox muses: “my hands are bleeding / from trying to free myself.” While vague, this verse sounds similar to the engagement ring MGK gave to her in January 2022. In an interview with Vogue that month, the Mainstream Sellout rapper revealed the band of her ring has thorns, which could hurt her if she tried to take it off.
“Love is pain!” MGK said when describing the ring, which features a diamond from jeweler Stephen Webster.
However, this poem could be about any number of partners. While promoting the book, Fox revealed she has been involved with several “very famous people” in abusive relationships that “no one knows about.”
In her poems “i” and “ii,” Fox seemingly details her emotions following a miscarriage.
“I want to hold your hand / hear your laugh … but now / I have to say / goodbye,” she wrote. There’s also a line of Fox envisioning her child being taken away from her womb.
Pretty Boys Are Poisonous is out now.
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