Poetry by Rowan Evans

Author’s Note

There are versions of ourselves we remember fondly.

There are versions we barely recognize.

And then there are the versions we survived.

The Versions I Survived is a journey through four different points in my life—four stops along a timeline where the person waiting at each destination is still me, but never quite the same me.

The first version was simply trying to make it through another day. Writing became a weapon against the darkness, a way to leave something behind even when I wasn’t sure there would be a future waiting for me.

The second version learned how to hope again, even if hope was fragile and the future still felt impossible to imagine.

The third version discovered that happiness could coexist with darkness. The clouds didn’t disappear, but there were more sunny days between them.

And the fourth version is much closer to who I am now: someone who has learned that surviving doesn’t mean becoming untouched. The cracks remain. The scars remain. The stories remain.

But I learned how to fill those cracks with gold.

That’s the thread connecting every version of me: I kept moving.

Every version carried something forward. Every version left something behind. Every version became part of the person holding the pen now.

Maybe that’s what survival actually is.

Not becoming someone who was never broken.

Becoming someone who can look at every broken version of themselves and say:

I remember you.
I survived you.
And I’m still here.

— Rowan Evans

The Versions I Survived
Poetry by Rowan Evans

It’s a crime scene
written in the rhyme scheme,
as I bleed ink on a porcelain page—
wounds once sewn shut,
torn and bleeding, once again.
I take a trip through time,
going back to the past—
revisiting events long passed,
but also revisiting versions of myself, too.

The first stop—
I’ll go back to when I thought
I wasn’t going to make it,
back when my eyes were vacant—
the lights were on,
but nobody was home—
I was lost inside myself,
I was just trying to hide myself.
Tomorrow felt so far away,
and today was just pain—
that’s what it was like for me.

That’s why I took to writing—
it was my way of fighting,
standing up to my demons—
and confronting the rot.
I became a warrior on the page,
even when I had no hope for change—
I just knew I wasn’t going to go
without leaving something behind.

The second stop—
now let’s visit the time when
I had hope again, fragile as it was—
the future didn’t seem so dim,
but still it was hard to picture it.
People would ask me what I wanted,
what I had planned—
five years in the future,
that seemed crazy to me—
I couldn’t think five seconds
without panicking.

I was living—
moment to moment,
the future was shifting sands—
nothing solid, nothing to hold in hands.
But I was alive and moving,
every step a struggle—
yet, I knew there a version of the future
worth a little struggling.

The third stop—
this time we’ll visit the me,
that had more sunny days
than cloudy skies.
It had become a little easier to smile—
and I was writer lighter too.
It was more roses, a little less Reaper,
there was still darkness—
just a little less Grim.

Even the moments
when the moon
would eclipse the sun—
during this time,
I didn’t go numb—
I never lost feeling,
even when scared and trembling—
even when my chest felt heavy,
I never retreated, not fully.
Not like I used to—

The fourth stop—
this is closer to the me
I am now—
life hasn’t been kind to them,
but they never turned their back
on empathy, they never let themselves
become truly empty—
every crack, they filled with gold,
they didn’t hide the stories untold.
They amplified, and showed they’re beautiful—
a quiet sign of the resilience earned.
It was the reward for every lesson learned—

I made the cracks gleam,
filled the seams—
gold and platinum strings,
I made the pain
part of the story,
just another element
of the narrative—
every poem became
both prophecy and parody.

Journey into the Hexverse

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