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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: ConfessionalPoetry

  • 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?

  • The Weight of Wonder

    Rowan Evans

    I’m terrified—not the kind of fear that fades,
    but the kind that lives in my bones,
    whispering at every quiet moment,
    reminding me that I might break the one I finally hold close.

    Because I know what it’s like to be broken,
    to feel like a cracked mirror—
    and sometimes, I catch myself reflecting that same fracture.
    What if my cracks cut them?
    What if my shadows swallow their light?

    I’m scared of being the echo of every hurt they’ve tried to forget—
    the ghost that follows behind love,
    slowly unraveling it, stitch by stitch.

    I want to be their shelter,
    but I’m afraid I’m just another storm,
    a storm that leaves bruises they never asked for.

    I carry the weight of past failures—
    not just mine, but the ones I fear I’ll repeat.
    Because love isn’t just a feeling—
    it’s a responsibility, a fragile treasure
    that can shatter if held too tightly,
    or lost if held too loosely.

    I want to protect them from the pain,
    but what if I become the pain?
    What if my best isn’t enough,
    and the person I love ends up hurting anyway?

    I think about love like the Mona Lisa—
    so rare, so precious, so infinitely valuable—
    and I’m terrified I’ll look away,
    unaware of the masterpiece in my hands,
    until it’s marred beyond repair.

    Maybe I’m afraid because love demands truth,
    and sometimes I’m afraid of what that truth reveals—
    my own brokenness, my own fears,
    the dark places I’ve never fully faced.

    But even with all that fear,
    I want to try.
    To learn how to be the balm,
    not the bruise.
    To hold them like they are the last light I’ll ever find in the dark.

    Because love—real love—shouldn’t be a battlefield.
    It should be home.

    And I’m so desperate to come home.