Poetry by Rowan Evans

Author’s Note

Some poems arrive because of a grand idea.

Others arrive because a single sentence refuses to leave.

This was one of those.

The poem began when I remembered a conversation. A joke, really. Someone once described themselves as being “like a drug” and we laughed about it. At the time, it felt playful, exaggerated, harmless.

But memory has a way of revisiting things from a different angle.

When I thought about that conversation later, I realized what interested me wasn’t the comparison itself. It was the experience of slowly realizing that someone has become part of your everyday thoughts without you noticing exactly when it happened.

One day they’re simply someone you know.

Then they’re someone you think about.

Then they’re someone who quietly occupies space in your mind when nothing else is demanding your attention.

The drug metaphor gave me a doorway into the poem, but it isn’t really what the poem is about.

It’s about affection.

It’s about attachment.

It’s about the strange vulnerability of admitting that someone matters.

More than that, it’s about the difference between being needed and being wanted.

Need can feel transactional.

Want feels chosen.

The final lines became the emotional center for me because they capture a hope I think many people carry but rarely say aloud:

Not that someone has to stay.

Not that someone owes us their attention.

Just that maybe, if given the choice, they would choose us too.

Like a lot of my recent work, humor and metaphor show up first. They’re familiar territory. They’re comfortable. They make difficult things easier to approach.

But beneath the jokes, the poem is doing what many of my poems eventually do.

It’s confessing.

— Rowan Evans

Maybe You’ll Want Me Too
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I remember when you said—
you are like a drug.

It was all laughs
about your exes being hooked,
still shook by the thoughts of you.

But I was getting second-hand
contact highs—

now I feel addicted too.

It’s like you’re in my bloodstream.
You’ve rewired my brain,
rebalanced the chemical compounds—
you’re in nearly every single thought now.

I try to hide it behind metaphors
and jokes—an attempt to mask
the fragile hope—

that you won’t need me,
but maybe you’ll want me too.

Journey into the Hexverse…

[Recognizes Home]
A free-verse poem exploring the difference between love as dependency and love as choice. It challenges the idea that love must be need-based, instead centering the quiet strength of choosing someone while still remaining whole on your own.

[Not Rebuilding You]
A poem about love as an act of presence rather than rescue. Through construction imagery, Not Rebuilding You explores trust, devotion, emotional safety, and the quiet work of building a foundation strong enough for healing to grow.

[The Language Her Soul Speaks]
What if love isn’t about being understood, but learning to understand someone else? “The Language Her Soul Speaks” is a free verse poem about intimacy, communication, curiosity, and the desire to know another person beyond the limits of language.

[Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3)]
A moonlit shoreline, a rowboat full of ducks, a piggybank with no cents, and a confession hidden in plain sight. Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3) explores how humor, wordplay, and absurdity can become a side door to vulnerability when the truth feels too difficult to say directly.

[L Words & Heart]
A moonlit shoreline, a rowboat full of ducks, a piggybank with no cents, and a confession hidden in plain sight. Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3) explores how humor, wordplay, and absurdity can become a side door to vulnerability when the truth feels too difficult to say directly.

If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]