Poetry by Rowan Evans

Author’s Note

There’s a difference between where you’re born and where you belong.

For some people, those two things are inseparable. Their birthplace feels like home, their nationality feels like an extension of their identity, and the idea of leaving is difficult to imagine. But that hasn’t been my experience.

This poem explores a feeling I’ve carried for a very long time: the sense that the country I was born in has never quite felt like the place I’m meant to call home. This isn’t a sudden realization or a passing frustration. It’s something I’ve been writing about since I was fourteen, and now, at thirty-six, that feeling hasn’t disappeared. If anything, I’ve become more certain that it’s something I need to take seriously.

I want to make an important distinction here. This isn’t about pretending I can change where I was born, nor is it about denying the nationality attached to that fact. I’m American by birthplace, and that isn’t going to change. But identity is more complicated than a line on a birth certificate. Nationality doesn’t automatically create belonging, and sharing a language doesn’t guarantee sharing a cultural perspective.

Sometimes, two people can come from the same country, speak the same language, and still feel as though they’re speaking from entirely different worlds.

The final image of the broken compass is intentional. I don’t necessarily know exactly where I’m going yet, and I certainly don’t have every step figured out. But I know the direction in which my heart keeps pulling me. The needle drifts east, following a tide that has been calling for longer than I’ve perhaps been willing to admit.

This isn’t about running away from a place. It’s about moving toward the possibility of finding another.

Because home shouldn’t have to be something you inherit simply because you were born somewhere. Sometimes, it’s something you have to go out and discover for yourself.

— Rowan Evans

The Needle Drifts East
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I’m an American—
that’s what they tell me.
I’m an American
because the soil I was born on—
but I’ve never felt it,
no connection—
thread severed.

They say—
this is where home is supposed to be,
so this is my home supposedly—
but it’s never felt like home to me.
and I don’t mean to hate,
I’m just trying to say—
America isn’t home, it’ll never be.

I don’t say that lightly.

I’ve moved from coast
to coast and back again—
spent a little time,
settled in the middle—

this isn’t a phase,
it isn’t a whim—
I’ve been wanting to leave
since fourteen,
and I’ve said that in poems before—
I’ll probably say it in a couple more.

Because that’s the truth I feel—
and I’ve felt it for a long time,
fourteen to thirty-six
and that’s why I say—

“You’re an American?”
Me too.

“You speak English?”
Me too.

But why does it feel like
two different languages
when I speak with you?

Two Americans
with two different cultural views.

I’m an American
because I have to be,
it’s where I was born—
not what I feel inside of me.
I can’t change it, I know—
but I can say it doesn’t fit,
like a poorly thought out
hand-me-down.

I’m an American
and that won’t change—
but I can change the place
I stand—
it’ll take time,
I’ve got research and plan it—
find somewhere else
to live on this planet—

just know that I know
where my compass points—

it broke some time ago,
there’s no magnetic north.
So the needle drifts east—
in the same direction
as the tide pulls—

Journey into the Hexverse

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