In January, after the release of Halsey’s third album Manic, she was slated to hit the road for one of her biggest tours yet. But instead, the pop singer, born Ashley Frangipane, found her plans on pause. Like much of the world, she has spent most of this year at home—and she’s embraced the coziness. In fact, when we speak in the days leading up to the presidential election, Halsey is peak-hygge, flaunting her newly shaved head, wearing a Barbie-esque Biden-Harris sweatshirt, and bundled in a giant, plush blanket. “I look like, I don’t know, a gym teacher or something,” Halsey quips on Zoom from an office in Los Angeles, where she lives.

Yet the multi-hyphenate never gets too comfortable. Halsey has remained quite busy: She has been on the frontlines of the Black Lives Matter protests, landed her first acting gig in the forthcoming Sydney Sweeney-produced series The Players Table, performed alongside Bruce Springsteen for a remote COVID-19 benefit for her home state of New Jersey, and filmed a conversation series with Senator Bernie Sanders. Tomorrow, She releases her debut collection of poems, I Would Leave Me If I Could.

Halsey has never played coy when it comes to the most intimate details of her life, whether that’s talking about sex, miscarriage, or struggles with bipolar disorder, so it’s no surprise that she continues in that vulnerable mode with I Would Leave Me If I Could. In fact, before she signed a record deal, she garnered a massive following on Tumblr for her poems—one breakup poem was even reblogged 820,000 times. 

“I’m not treating it like it’s this fucking opus,” says Halsey of her new book. “It’s no different to me than what I used to do on my Tumblr. I used to write poetry and post it on my blog every day.” The book features poems about everything from the stark realities of bipolar disorder to sexual assault.

Below, the singer speaks with Vogue about her New Jersey roots, the director she’s hoping to work with someday, how she’s staying healthy during the pandemic—and shares an exclusive excerpt from her book, the poem “ordinary boys.”

“The poem is about a guy that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be with,” Halsey says, “but I kept trapping myself in the relationship with him. … In moments where I feel powerless, one of the ways that I gain awareness and control over a situation in my life is that I write about it. Once you’ve put someone down on paper, you’ve reduced them to a character, and they no longer have the power that they do in real life.”