NOTHING BURNS AS BRIGHT AS YOU

Friendship evolves into a fiery, complex first love for two teen girls.

This nonlinear novel in verse begins at the end, as a queer Black couple stand on opposite sides of a bridge, their relationship crumbling. The first and last poems—both titled “After the Fire”—are the only times the story is told from the point of view of the partner, a girl only ever referred to as “you.” The unnamed narrator begins by alternating between the history of their tumultuous relationship and the day things begin to unravel, when the pair set fire to a dumpster in their high school’s parking lot. In addition to exploring queerness—the narrator is attracted to other girls, her partner is bisexual—Woodfolk also writes about how girls, especially Black girls, learn that what other people think about how they look can put them in danger. The two met at a coffee shop and soon became friends, partners in trouble, and each other’s everything. Through the economical and expressive poems, readers are pulled into the narrator’s deep, shifting emotions as her feelings for her friend change. The rich language describing the way the two love each other is magnificent: “we added up to a little too much. // You loved me more than I knew. / I loved you more than you could take.” Fire is a symbol throughout, and the final flames aptly represent the passion and volatility of this relationship.

A beautiful, emotionally charged novel.