Author’s Note

This piece lives in a space between two interpretations, and I wrote it that way on purpose.

It can be read as a reflection on identity–on the versions of ourselves we carry, the ones we’ve been, and ones we hesitate to become. A room filled with selves, each one shaped by different choices, different fears, different moments of almost.

But it can also be read as something more relational. The figure in the piece–“her”–can exist as a person. Someone who feels steady, certain, present in a way the speaker isn’t yet. Someone who becomes a point of gravity.

What matters to me is that the distance between them comes from the same place in both readings.

Not circumstance.

Not timing.

But hesitation.

In that way, the poem sits in the overlap between becoming and connection–where reaching someone else and becoming yourself start to feel like the same act.

— Rowan Evans

Standing Between Us
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I walk into a room
that knows my name too well.

It is filled with me—
not reflections,
not mirrors—
but selves.

They stand where I once stood,
breathe how I used to breathe,
hold their hands like I remember doing
before I knew why.

Some look at me.
Most don’t.

They are not ghosts—
not quite.
I cannot see through them.
They have weight.
Presence.
Like memories
that never learned how to fade.

I move through them anyway.

Shoulder brushing shoulder—
past brushing present—
future turning its head
just a second too late.

And then—

her.

Not fully seen.
Never fully seen.

A glimpse
between the space
of two mistakes,
I used to make.

A flicker
caught in the outline
of who I used to be
and who I might become.

I follow.

Or maybe I orbit.

Because every time I get close,
another version of me steps in the way—
hesitation given form,
fear with a body,
longing wearing my face.

I want to call out—
but which voice is mine?

They all sound like me.

So I keep moving.

Through regret.
Through almosts.
Through the selves that loved—
too early,
too late…

too quietly.

And still—
I see her.

Soft.
Certain.
Waiting in the space
I haven’t learned to stand in yet.

I think—

no.

I know.

She is not lost in this room.

I am.

And every version of me
that I refuse to become
is standing between us.

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