Author’s Note

Some dreams visit us once. Others stay long enough to become part of who we are.

East of Memory is about a longing that has outlived the versions of me who first felt it. Since I was fourteen, I’ve imagined a life beyond the streets I know—a life somewhere across the Pacific, shaped by places that have called to me at different stages of growing up. Japan came first, then Korea and China, and eventually Manila became the place my thoughts kept returning to.

I’ve questioned that pull more than once. Is it a passing fascination? A story I’ve told myself for so long that it feels like destiny? Or is there something deeper in the way certain places seem to find us before we’ve ever set foot in them?

I don’t have all the answers. I only know that this dream has stayed with me through years of changing plans, changing circumstances, and changing versions of myself. It has never been as simple as wanting to travel. It’s about imagining a life where the unfamiliar might feel more natural than the familiar, where distance doesn’t necessarily mean disconnection, and where home might be something we discover rather than something we’re born into.

The title, East of Memory, lives in that strange space between longing and recognition. Memory usually points backward, toward places we’ve known and lives we’ve lived. But what happens when the compass points toward somewhere you’ve never been? What do you call the feeling of missing a place you can’t remember visiting?

Maybe it’s imagination. Maybe it’s intuition. Maybe it’s simply the human desire to find somewhere we can finally exhale.

I don’t want to romanticize leaving, either. A dream can be meaningful without being easy, and a destination can matter without magically solving every problem waiting for us there. The practical realities still exist. The journey still takes time. Wanting to go is not the same as being ready to leave.

But after all these years, I know this much: I don’t want my desire for a different life to be mistaken for a rejection of the one I’ve lived. I’m not trying to erase my past. I’m trying to make room for a future that feels like mine.

So when I finally go, I hope people understand the difference.

Sometimes leaving is running away.

And sometimes, after years of drifting toward a place you cannot quite explain, leaving is the first step toward belonging.

— Rowan Evans‌

East of Memory
Poetry by Rowan Evans

Since I was fourteen—

I’ve been plotting and scheming,
really been dreaming of leaving—
I don’t feel at home in these streets.
They don’t feel like the place for me,
and that’s why I am looking to leave—
it’s been a little more than a dream,
I’ve been feeling this for longer than it seems.

Mapped flight paths across the Pacific blue.
At eighteen, it was Japan—
I pictured Korea in my early twenties,
and even China too—
then I hit twenty-six,
it was Manila that seemed to stick—
was this just a mental trick?

Or did my subconscious pick?

I’ve even mapped routes to sail—
but that’s the backup plan,
in case the first one fails—
and I hate to feel like I’m standing still,
so I will always follow this path with an iron-will—

the way the compass shows, it’s not north for me,
it’s somewhere east of memory—
a place I’ve never lived
but somehow know.

And when I finally go,
don’t call it running—
call it returning.

Call it the end of a long, slow drift
toward the only place—

that ever felt like home.

Journey into the Hexverse

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