Author’s Note

Love Addict (High on Love) is me taking one of my recurring themes—how intensely I experience love—and pushing the metaphor until it becomes impossible to ignore.
 
I’ve often written about love as something intoxicating. A rush. A chemical reaction. Something that can make the world feel brighter and the mind move faster. But this poem asks what happens when that metaphor is taken literally enough to become uncomfortable.
 
Because sometimes I don’t simply want love.
 
I crave it.
 
There is a difference.
 
The language of addiction works here because love can create its own strange cycle: anticipation, euphoria, uncertainty, withdrawal, craving, and the desperate desire for another hit of the feeling that made everything seem worthwhile.
 
And, naturally, my response to that craving is to write.
 
That’s one of the things I find fascinating about my relationship with poetry. I don’t merely write about what I’m feeling—I often metabolize the feeling through language. I take the emotion, push it through rhythm and metaphor, turn it over until I can see its shape, and then put it on the page.
 
So the final joke is also the truth.
 
I get high on love.
 
Then I get high on writing about getting high on love.
 
And apparently, the cycle continues.
 
Maybe that’s the real habit.
 
— Rowan Evans

Love Addict (High on Love)
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I get high on love
like it’s a drug
and I’m an addict
with a habit,
fighting for every hit
that I can get—

if I could,
I would OD on it.
Inject it straight
to my chest,
in-between the ribs—
where the heart lives.

I’d take the risk,
the comedown, the crash,
just to feel one moment
where love doesn’t pass.

I get the shakes and quake,
knot in the stomach—cold sweats,
when love doesn’t sit in the chest—
it feels fake, not worth the weight.

Wait—
what was I saying?

I get high on love
like it’s a drug
and I’m an addict,
so I write lines
that expand the mind,
to feed the habit.

Journey into the Hexverse…

[Poet’s Curse]
Poet’s Curse explores the painful side of falling too deeply: giving pieces of yourself away freely, taking accountability for your own heartbreak, and realizing that learning to let go can be harder than learning to love.

[When I Fall]
When I Fall is a vulnerable poem about loving without reservation, feeling everything deeply, and refusing to make the heart smaller just because wholehearted love can sometimes lead to loneliness and pain.

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