With kitchen-table candour and empathy, Charlie Petch's debut collection of poems offers witness to a decades-long trans/personal coming of age. Poems that fuse text with performance, and find heroes in unexpected places. Why I Was Late fuses text with performance, brings a transmasculine wisdom, humour, and experience to bear upon tailgates, spaceships, wrestling rings, and other traditionally masculine spaces. Fierce, tender, convention re-inventing--Petch works hard. And whether it's as a union lighting technician, a hospital bed allocator, a Toronto hot dog vendor, or a performer/player of the musical saw, the work is survival. Heroes are found in unexpected places, elevated by both large and small gestures of kindness, accountability and acceptance. No subject--grief, disability, kink, sexuality, gender politics, violence--is off limits. A poet so good at drag they had everyone convinced that they were a woman for the first forty years of their life, Petch has somehow brought the stage and its attendant thrills into the book. Better late than. And better. "Charlie Petch's Why I Was Late is a poetic debut with the wisdom of a sage and the emotional range of an expert comedian. ... Do yourself a favor and read this book. This is a master at work."--Kai Cheng Thom, author of I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World "Why I Was Late is a vulnerable, authentic collection of poems - unpredictable and brilliant, sometimes grotesque and downright hilarious - Charlie Petch is a necessary voice in poetry." --Mary Lambert, author of Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across