Saint Serotonin

Ya Allah if it / will keep my heart soft please break / my heart everyday.

A woman meets a man. She carries, as we all do, the weight of her childhood, the story of her parents, the body she was born into. Endorphins race in her – their love is fated. But what comes next?

In Saint Serotonin, the world narrows to a single, ferocious flame of obsession. From the jitters of infatuation to the ecstatic wager of losing oneself in another, Shire paints an uncompromising and complicated portrait of a woman in love: The only side effect is / nothing will ever be enough.

These are poems of reckless intoxication, devotion, abasement, tenderness, addiction. Sensual, subversive, perfume-scented yet horror-tinged, Saint Serotonin ensnares us in its intimate derangements. As our narrator fights her way back to herself, who will she be when she emerges?

This collection is at once a promise and a warning, an excavation of what it is to love and be loved.