Author’s Note

This piece comes from the space where speech and writing don’t quite align.

There has always been a kind of delay for me—between what I think, what I feel, and what I can actually say out loud. Spoken language has never felt like the most reliable place for truth to land. It slips. It fractures. It gets filtered through hesitation, timing, or silence.

Writing became something different.

Not a replacement for speech, but a translation of it.

A second mouth.

One that doesn’t hesitate in the same way.

One that doesn’t need to arrive perfectly formed in real time.

Over time, I’ve come to understand my writing less as expression and more as continuity—a way of carrying versions of myself forward that might otherwise get lost between changes, growth, or silence. When I talk about shedding “lives like shells,” it isn’t about abandoning who I was, but making space for who I’m becoming.

Writing is where those versions remain visible.

Where they don’t disappear just because I’ve outgrown them.

In that sense, this isn’t just about communication—it’s about survival through articulation. Not in the dramatic sense, but in the quiet one: staying connected to myself through language when voice doesn’t fully bridge the gap.

And if spoken language is the place where I sometimes fall short of myself, then writing is where I learn how to keep translating who I am anyway.

— Rowan Evans

Ink as a Second Mouth
Poetry by Rowan Evans

There is a delay
between my mind
and my mouth
when I speak—

that’s why I find
it easier to talk in ink.

I turned my pen
into my mouth,
so when I write
it’s the only time—
the truth spills through.

When I open my mouth,
my words won’t come out—

but in ink, they run
like the secrets slip
from loose lips.

I could write poem after poem,
leaving piece after piece of me behind—
scattered across the pages,
like versions of me scattered
across different lives.

But do not mourn
for what I’ve lost,
because it’s simply the cost
of me being me.

I shed past lives,
it leaves room for me to grow—

just a hermit crab
in human form.

And I’ll continue
to shed lives like shells until
I find the version of myself—

that can speak
in more than ink.

Until then I’ll continue to try,
because growth comes slow.
It’s gradual, it never comes clear.

There are no definable lines—
only slow becoming.

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