Anticipate Good Things Coming

From Stephanie Fonseca — writer, poet, and self-described hopeless romantic who uses her own feelings and experiences as her guide, and who views optimism as a practice: "Despite the bad days I encounter, I choose to view life with optimism." "Anticipate Good Things Coming" is her second poetry collection. Her first collection began in heartbreak — situationships, self-sabotage, temporary people, the specific grief of caring for someone who couldn't meet you there. This one is what comes after: the side of the story where you've done the work, survived the ending, and are learning to trust that something better is already on its way. Not naively. Not without remembering how the last one felt. But with the hard-earned, eyes-open optimism of someone who has chosen, deliberately, to keep hoping anyway. The voice moves between short lyric poems and "Little Miss" vignettes — punchy, recognizable, shareable third-person portraits of the patterns hopeless romantics know from the inside: chasing, staying too long, hoping someone changes their mind, hurting your own feelings and blaming someone else. Self-awareness is part of the warmth. Fonseca doesn't write from a position of having it all figured out. She writes from the position of someone who sees herself clearly and is still choosing to believe in good things coming. Across 144 pages the book moves through self-love, romantic hope, the friendships and connections that hold you between love stories, and the particular season of life when you are no longer in crisis but not yet arrived — waiting, growing, trusting the timing. The cover, with its embossed gold foil, butterflies, and florals, announces the register before the first page: this is a book that believes in beauty.