(Kaur self-published it a year prior.) In its first week of release, Kaur’s follow-up was duking it out for the top spot on Amazon’s best-seller list with Dan Brown’s latest novel.

Her debut, Milk and Honey, has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide since its 2015 re-release by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Her poetry has gotten her more than likes, though. Kaur’s most-liked poem, which is just six lines and begins “ how is it so easy for you/ to be kind to people, he asked,” earned over 240,000 likes. Most are bite-size affirmations, accompanied by Kaur’s own delicate line drawings, that go down easy when scrolling through Instagram. Since 2013, Kaur has been sharing poems about love, heartbreak and womanhood that perfectly exemplify the self-care movement. But this story of what was supposed to be a nausea-free victory lap, which she spares me the gross details of finishing, is just the kind of anecdote her 1.9 million Instagram followers would adore. It’s a celebration which kicked off the night before with a live performance of her work featuring Westfeldt, YouTube star Lilly Singh and fellow poet Chloe Wade. Trying to keep fruit down isn’t exactly how the 25-year-old imagined she’d be celebrating the release of her second collection of poetry, The Sun and Her Flowers. “I was like, ‘You’re talking about something so deep right now, but the strawberries are coming back up girl, I gotta go.'” “I knew something was wrong when I was talking to Jennifer and the green haze came over me,” she says in between sips of red Gatorade. Sitting on a king-size mattress in her Soho Grand hotel room, Kaur tells the story of how she almost lost her brunch all over actress Jennifer Westfeldt. Rupi Kaur is too sick to get out of bed and wishes she had realized this a few hours earlier.

Deep milk and honey poems