“The self keeps atomizing,” charles theonia writes in “The Color of Joy Is Pink,” a poem from their debut collection, Gay Heaven Is a Dance Floor but I Can’t Relax (the title comes from a tweet by Diana Ross). The line reminds me of a story I read when I was about ten years old, about a little boy who wakes from a nightmare, bolts out of bed, and charges toward his parents’ room; he pauses when he realizes he’s walked straight through a wall. That moment is enough to slow down his frantic molecules, and he is reconstituted as a solid—but more significantly, he’s stuck, bricked up in between the walls of his home. Reading charles theonia’s poetry makes me feel a bit like that boy, but I don’t get stuck until I finish reading, and then I can simply start over and I’ll vibrate again.