Suppose you finally say, I’m my own person.

Suppose you say, No one else is in charge of me.

Suppose you tell yourself, I’m nobody’s bad girl.

Suppose you’re that kind of woman. Just suppose.

In this new revised, expanded edition of her acclaimed debut poetry collection, Phases, Belinda Betker deftly captures what it is like for those who don’t fit within rigid notions of what it means to be a “boy” or a “girl.” She takes readers on a luminous journey of a young girl’s coming-of-age, her burgeoning sexuality, an unhappy marriage, the triumphant release of coming out, and the liberating power of drag.

In these poems, readers will find a celestial and transcendent re-discovering of the self; an unravelling of society’s expectations of gender, love, and desire, and how these falsehoods threaten to eclipse our truth. Phases is mercurial and unpredictable, a celebration of the non-conformist in each of us.