Poetry by Rowan Evans

My knees don’t bend anymore—
they buckle.
Like ruins left too long in the rain,
stone tired of pretending to be strong.
They scream when I stand,
and I still fucking stand.

My fingers feel like they’re snapping
under the weight of nothing.
Every joint—
cracked glass,
splinters in slow motion.
Even silence hurts.

I drag this body like a broken casket.
Like I’m already dead
and just forgot to stop breathing.
My skin is tight with ache,
my soul sags inside me
like wet clothes clinging to a forgotten line.

Sleep doesn’t save me.
It buries me.
Deeper.
Suffocating under the illusion of rest,
waking up in the same grave
with a new layer of dirt.

I want to say I’m not okay—
but I don’t.
Because it scares people.
Because I don’t want them to carry this,
whatever this is.
So I lie. I laugh. I smile
like it’s stitched into my face
by hands that don’t love me.

I feel like a burden.
A cracked plate kept out of guilt.
Dead weight in people’s lives.
They’d never say it,
but I feel it—
in their silences, in my own reflection,
in the way I don’t call, don’t ask, don’t speak.

Am I even allowed to say this out loud?
To scream into a void that already swallowed so many?
I feel like I’m rotting from the inside.
Like something went bad in me
and I can’t cut it out.

I try to help. God, I try.
But I feel like a fucking hypocrite
telling others to hold on
when I’m always on the edge myself.

I don’t want to die.
Not really.
I just want it to stop.
Just want to breathe
without it hurting.

I just want to be okay.
Not amazing.
Not healed.
Just…
okay.

Is that so much to ask?