The Pleasure of Being Unchosen: Poems About Unrequited Love, Identity, and Emotional Healing (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798246032893)

the pleasure of being unchosen is a coming-of-age poetry collection about masculinity, longing, and the quiet ache of wanting to be seen. Written over nine years, these poems detail the speaker's journey from boyhood to early adulthood as he navigates desire, rejection, and the uneasy performance of manhood.

Moving between childhood memories in the Bronx and first loves that never quite materialize, the poems explore the strange intimacy of wanting someone who will not choose you.

What begins as a search for love becomes something more complicated: an examination of how identity, masculinity, and longing shape the way we learn to desire, and the quiet ways rejection can become its own form of belonging.