The actress’s book ‘Pretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems’ is out Tuesday

Megan Fox. PHOTO: MEGAN FOX

Megan Fox is 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 lifetime of “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,” the Jennifer’s Body actress says. “Poetry gives me a space to experience some catharsis through art.”

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Megan Fox.FRANZISKA KRUG/GETTY IMAGES

Pretty Boys Are Poisonous explores 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 musician Machine 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 addiction
that no amount of prayers
will ever cure
my cries for relief
floating
unheard into the ether
you are killing me
but my heart
won’t give you up
this thread
through our past lives
tightly wound
around my neck
siphoning my breath
to fill your lungs
my hands are bleeding
from trying to free myself
you offer me a smile
content to steal my life
knowing at least this way
no one else
will ever have me