Megan Fox.Photo:Megan Fox

Megan Fox
Megan Foxis sharing what she’s learned about navigating relationships.
Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, the star’s first book of poems, debuts on Tuesday, taking inspiration from her own life as well as her imagination.
“It comes from a lot of places,” Fox tells PEOPLE. “Some of it is literal, while other parts are allegorical. Some poems contain a Grimm’s-fairy-tale-type element, and others serve the same purpose as memes in online culture.”
“All of it,” she says, “is something women can relate to.”
Fox says she turned to writing her “whole life” after finding an outlet that her performing career never provided. (This book, she said in an August statement,gave her “freedom” after a lifetimeof “keeping the secrets of men.")
“Acting doesn’t really allow me to express myself fully in the way writing does because I’m reading someone else’s words under someone else’s direction,” theJennifer’s Bodyactress says. “Poetry gives me a space to experience some catharsis through art.”
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Megan Fox.Franziska Krug/Getty Images

Franziska Krug/Getty Images
Pretty Boys Are Poisonousexplores toxic dynamics, among other topics. As Fox explains, “Relationships are complicated.”
“For most of us it’s not a fairy tale. Relationships are not pretty. They are ugly. Sometimes they are a war,” says Fox, who is engaged to musicianMachine Gun Kelly. “But through a wound enters an opportunity to grow and become a stronger more whole version of yourself.”
The mom of three kept some of her darker poems to herself — “I didn’t even bother sending the majority of what I wrote to my editor because they were too graphic and unsettling for others to read,” she reveals — but she’s not nervous for anyone to read her work.
“I’ve been in the public eye for a long time and my career has been one long witch hunt. So nervous?No,” says Fox, adding, “I expect a mixture of admiration and vitriol from the public.”
Read on for an exclusive excerpt from the book, available Tuesday wherever books are sold.
Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

“a beautiful boy is a deadly drug”
you are an addictionthat no amount of prayerswill ever curemy cries for relieffloatingunheard into the etheryou are killing mebut my heartwon’t give you upthis threadthrough our past livestightly woundaround my necksiphoning my breathto fill your lungsmy hands are bleedingfrom trying to free myselfyou offer me a smilecontent to steal my lifeknowing at least this wayno one elsewill ever have me
source: people.com