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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: burnout

  • The Mind’s Winter: A Poem About Emotional Withdrawal, Overthinking, and Missing Someone

    Rowan Evans

    This wasn’t planned as part of the current sequence.
    Some things just need to be written–and shared–when they happen.

    Author’s Note

    There are patterns we don’t always notice until we’ve lived them more than once.

    The same thoughts.
    The same timing.
    The same quiet retreat inward.

    The Mind’s Winter comes from recognizing one of those cycles in real time–watching myself disappear into my own head, knowing it’s happening, and not always knowing how to stop it.

    It’s strange, being both the one experiencing something and the one observing it. To understand the “why,” but still feel pulled into it anyway.

    This piece isn’t about solving that pattern.

    It’s about naming it.

    About acknowledging the way overwhelm can turn inward, how distance can grow even when you don’t want it to, and how sometimes the things that matter most are the very things that scare us into retreat.

    And maybe, in recognizing the cycle…

    there’s a chance to break it.

    — Rowan Evans

    A lone figure stands in a quiet winter landscape, surrounded by bare trees and falling snow, symbolizing emotional withdrawal and introspection.
    Sometimes the cold isn’t outside—it’s the space we retreat into when everything becomes too much.

    The Mind’s Winter
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    February 8th, 2026—
    I got sick again.
    It happens every year
    like clockwork.
    It starts with the headache,
    caused by being overwhelmed.

    It starts slowly,
    then snowballs
    into more.

    You see, this period of time—
    it usually comes after
    what I tend to call
    the mind’s winter.

    I slip into a deep void
    of thought.

    January 8th…
    that’s the date.

    That’s when I drift inside.
    I get lost in my mind,
    and I stay there—
    one month—I’m gone.
    Lost in thought.

    One month
    leading up to my “big day,”
    the one they say
    should celebrate me.

    But I don’t see it that way.
    It’s just another day.

    And usually,
    I bounce back.
    It’s quick…

    but this?

    This feels like an attack—
    one month in my head,
    two weeks sick and then?

    I broke my glasses—
    vision—
    I lost access.

    And the longer I’m gone,
    the more I pull away,
    even as I—

    want to stay.

    You know what
    the worst part is?

    The worst part is—
    that I know why.

    I know why I do it…
    why I pull away.

    I’ve said the reason
    a hundred times,
    in nearly as many rhymes.
    It’s because you meant
    too much to me.
    I got scared and retreated
    into me.

    So here it is—
    March 21st,
    and I—

    I haven’t spoken to you
    since February 6th,
    and if I’m honest—

    I miss you.

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

  • The Hollowed Frame

    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?