Author’s Note

This version removes the turn entirely. There is no reaching, no choosing, no ache dressed up as desire. It is a statement of self-sufficiency, not as armor, but as fact.
This poem exists for moments when autonomy is the truth—and that truth needs no softening.

Same poem.
No turn this time.

— Rowan Evans

I Don’t Need You
(I Actually Don’t Need You Version)
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I don’t need you.
I can breathe on my own—
lungs have done it for decades
without asking permission.

I don’t need you.
I can sleep alone,
learn the shape of empty sheets,
make peace with the cold side of the bed.

I don’t need you
to make me whole.
I arrived here intact—
scarred, yes,
but assembled by my own hands.

I don’t need your voice
to steady me,
your name
to keep the dark from biting.
I’ve survived worse silences
than your absence.

I don’t need you
to save me.
I am not drowning.
I am not broken.
I am not waiting
to be rescued.

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

[I Don’t Need You] – Original
A poem about choosing love from a place of wholeness—celebrating independence, intimacy, and the power of saying “I don’t need you, but I want you.”

[I Don’t Need You] – Dangerous
“I don’t need you. I breathe. I rise, unbroken, unbent. Yet still, I choose you—dangerous, alive, and all in.” A fiery meditation on independence, desire, and choosing love from a place of strength.