Dickinson kicked off Season 2 with Emily getting some scary medical news… along with an opportunity to share her poems with the world.

Friday’s premiere opens with a history lesson, with a narrator telling us that details of the real Emily Dickinson’s life after Sue and Austin’s wedding are sketchy, and perhaps we can only find the real truth through her poems.

(When she says she writes, he tells her, “You might want to stop doing so much of that.”) Her vision is failing, the doc concludes, and he advises her to sit in dim rooms and avoid the sun.

When Emily and her dad return home, her mom frets about her grim diagnosis: “Why is this happening to me?” Lavinia wants to gossip, but Emily runs upstairs to write: “My mind is bursting with ideas.” (Her dad warns her about her eyes, but she’s undaunted.) Lavinia is excited to attend one of Austin and Sue’s fabulous parties tonight, since there’s been so much buzz about them.

Emily tries to write, but the noise from the party next door makes it impossible.

(“Oysters are actually a cheap and readily available food,” Lavinia sighs.) Shipley gives Austin a bro-ish greeting and tells him he and Lavinia are “engaged to be engaged”… even though she never agreed to that.

She demands to know what Sue thought of her poems, and Sue says they’re better than ever… but they’re also too much for her: “Your poems… they make me feel things I don’t want to feel.” They remind her of her recent miscarriage, which she still hasn’t told Austin about?

Sue wants Emily to meet Sam Bowles and thinks he might publish her poems in his newspaper, which is long overdue: “I can’t be your only reader anymore.” On cue, Sam shows up, calling Sue “Suzie” and casually bragging about his travels.

He knows all about Emily’s poems and wants to hear one — but when Sue encourages her to read one aloud at the party, Emily says “not tonight” and walks out.