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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: existential poetry

  • Toward Somewhere I Can Breathe | A Poem About Longing, Disconnection & Finding Home

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece is about a feeling I’ve struggled to name for most of my life — a feeling that I have tried to explain more recently — a quiet but persistent disconnect that began when I was fourteen.

    It isn’t about hating where I’m from.
    It isn’t about romanticizing somewhere else.

    It’s about that internal shift — the moment you realize you feel unrooted in a place where everyone else seems firmly planted.

    For years, I thought I was running away.
    Now I understand I’ve been moving toward something.

    Whether that “home” is a city, a country, a person, or a version of myself I haven’t fully stepped into yet — I don’t know.

    But I know this:
    I am not lost anymore.
    I am in motion.

    — Rowan Evans

    A lone figure looking toward a distant city skyline under a star-filled night sky, symbolizing longing and the search for home.
    Sometimes home isn’t where you started. Sometimes it’s where you finally breathe.

    Toward Somewhere I Can Breathe
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’ve tried my whole life
    to explain it.
    This disconnect,
    I’ve felt since
    2004.

    How can I make it
    any more clear?
    I just don’t belong here.

    I’m going to try
    and try to make it
    make sense.
    I was fourteen,
    Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi
    on the screen.

    But that’s not the important part.

    Inside—
    I could feel
    threads fray,
    and they
    already existed
    in decay.

    But I learned quickly,
    in 2007 exactly—
    there is Filth in the Beauty,
    and the reverse
    can be the same.

    That’s when
    my view of the
    world changed,
    and became
    cemented.

    Something shifted,
    vision cleared—
    and everything
    I missed before,
    just appeared.

    Where everyone
    around me,
    seemed rooted
    in the here.

    And I—
    would close my eyes,
    and wish upon
    shooting stars.
    I wanted out,
    I wanted to leave,
    go somewhere far.

    I knew it would take time,
    I needed things to align.
    But now I know
    what I’m moving toward,
    what I’m working for.

    I’m moving toward home.
    A place, where I belong.

    Maybe when I finally leave,
    I’ll touch down in the Philippines
    to walk Manila’s streets,
    and finally be able to breathe.

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

  • Funeral for a Thirty-Six-Year-Old | A Gothic Birthday Poem by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem is a birthday rite, not a reckoning.

    I’ve always treated birthdays less like milestones and more like ceremonial thresholds—moments to shed a skin, laugh at the ghosts behind me, and step forward with intention. Funeral for a Thirty-Six-Year-Old isn’t about mourning age; it’s about staging its death so something sharper, freer, and more self-aware can take its place.

    Thirty-six feels less like getting older and more like arriving. I’m no longer interested in quiet gratitude or graceful humility—I wanted pageantry, drama, and a little irreverence. This piece is me honoring survival with style, embracing the absurdity of time, and celebrating the fact that I’m still here, still dangerous, still writing.

    If this is a funeral, it’s one where the guest of honor very much refuses to stay dead.

    A gothic figure rising from a velvet coffin in a moonlit mausoleum, symbolizing a theatrical celebration of turning thirty-six.
    Thirty-six isn’t an ending—it’s a resurrection with better lighting.

    Funeral for a Thirty-Six-Year-Old
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I rise from my velvet coffin,
    for birthdays are sacred rituals of vanity,
    thirty-six too perfect for a quiet exit.

    Cobwebs kiss my ankles
    as I stride the mausoleum of my life,
    counting skeletons I’ve danced with
    and candles I’ve lit in the name of style.

    The moon winks at me through shattered panes,
    celestial bodies admire
    a drama queen in full bloom—
    not wilted, not weary, theatrically immortal.

    I sip absinthe from a skull-shaped chalice,
    grinning at the reaper waiting impatiently,
    his scythe tapping to the rhythm of my heartbeat—
    shrug. He’s never been my type.

    Mirrors whisper secrets of my youthful decay,
    I laugh—lines are suggestions,
    wrinkles invitations to flair,
    every grey hair a medal for surviving
    without losing my mind… entirely.

    Birthday cake, molten lava,
    frosted with sarcasm, glittering regrets.
    I devour it with a ceremonial fork,
    toasting myself—
    who else deserves this gothic pageantry?

    The clock ticks, and I bow to time,
    not in surrender, but in acknowledgment:
    I am older, wiser, and infinitely more unhinged.
    let the world tremble at my theatricality—
    I have arrived.

    Candles gutter. Shadows shiver.
    In the mirror’s reflection, I wink—
    thirty-six has never looked this dangerous,
    this decadent, this deliciously insane.

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

  • God, Explain – A Poetic Lament on Injustice and Faith by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    God, Explain came from that raw, restless place we all visit when the world feels unbearably unfair. It’s a lament, a scream into the void, asking why those who give, who love, who try to make life better for others, often feel left behind, while the greedy and selfish seem to thrive.

    This poem isn’t just about faith or religion—it’s about justice, morality, and the frustration of seeing inequity everywhere. It’s about holding hope in one hand and despair in the other, demanding answers when the silence is deafening.

    I wanted the language to feel immediate, confessional, and unpolished—because sometimes the heart cannot dress its pain in elegance. God, Explain is my questioning, my pleading, my refusal to stay silent when the imbalance of the world feels unbearable.

    It’s for anyone who has ever looked at the world and wondered, why?

    Lone figure on a cliff under a stormy sky, looking up in frustration and questioning, with rain falling around them.
    When the world rewards the greedy and the good suffer, we lift our voices—asking, God, explain.

    God, Explain
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Everybody wants to get rich—
    me? I just want to fucking live.
    To survive, to thrive,
    to reach out my hands—
    to help those in need.

    So I ask—

    God, if you’re real,
    why don’t you move?
    Why don’t you open the doors
    I’ve been pounding on?
    Line my pockets with gold
    not for me, not for pride,
    but for the ones
    who need it most.

    And yet…

    The hateful, the cruel, the greedy—
    they always have it.
    Always.
    Money in their pockets,
    power in their hands,
    while the good ones
    starve in the dark.

    I don’t get it.
    I can’t make sense of it.
    Even as I speak to you,
    even as I pray,
    my heart sinks.

    Why is it always the greedy?
    The selfish?
    Those who ignore the needy,
    yet wrap themselves
    in your name?

    Can you explain that to me?
    Can you explain why I—
    who only want to give,
    who only want to see people rise—
    get left behind?

    I don’t believe.
    I don’t believe in fairness,
    in justice,
    in you.
    And I scream it
    because I can’t be silent anymore.
    I need to know.
    Why?

    You can find more of my work in the full archive—[here]—in the Library of Ashes.