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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: identity

  • Roots & Wings – A Poem About Leaving, Growth, and New Horizons | Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Sometimes a place stops feeling like home long before you actually leave it. The streets still know your name, but something in you has already begun drifting toward another horizon.

    This poem came from that feeling – the quiet moment you realize your roots are no longer meant for the soil you’re standing in. It’s not always about running away; sometimes it’s about allowing yourself to grow somewhere new.

    Roots & Wings sits in that space between leaving and becoming. Between the life that shaped you and the one waiting somewhere beyond the horizon.

    We carry out roots with us, even when we learn how to fly.

    — Rowan Evans

    A bird flying toward the sunset above palm trees and the ocean, symbolizing freedom and new beginnings.
    Sometimes growth means planting new roots—and trusting your wings to find the horizon.

    Roots & Wings
    Poetry by Rowan Evans
    (written February 18th, 2025)

    These streets whisper my name, but I no longer listen,
    my roots ache for softer soil, where the sun glistens.
    I’ll plant myself where the palms embrace the sea,
    then let the wind carry what’s left of me—
    a bird unbound, chasing horizons yet unseen.

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

  • A Balance Found – A Short Poem About Identity, Duality, and Self-Acceptance

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem was written on February 19th as a quiet reflection on duality within the self. We are often told to choose between parts of who we are – light or shadow, reason or imagination, strength or softness. But real wholeness comes from learning both can exist at once.

    A Balance Found is about accepting the full spectrum of who we are. The dreamer and the observer. The light and the shade. Not as opposing forces, but as pieces of the same soul that finally learns to stand whole.

    — Rowan Evans

    A symbolic image of a person standing between light and shadow, representing balance between different parts of the self.
    Finding harmony between light and shadow within the self.

    A Balance Found
    Poetry by Rowan Evans
    (written February 19th, 2025)

    Ink and shadow, light and shade,
    Both have their place, both were made.
    One to dream, one to see,
    And I stand whole—both parts of me.

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

  • Refusing the Script: A Poem About Rejecting Expectations and Conformity

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Sometimes people expect you to play a role they’ve already written for you. A role shaped by their fears, their politics, or their idea of what loyalty should look like.

    This poem is about refusing that script.

    — Rowan Evans

    A spotlight illuminating a torn script on an empty stage symbolizing refusing expectations and imposed roles.
    Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is refuse the role others expect you to play.

    Refusing the Script
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I feel I lost my voice
    in a way,
    put pen to page,
    learned the cost to say—
    translating rage,
    when writing
    came to stay.

    Breaking bars
    on the mental cage,
    so I could escape.
    I’m no actor—
    I don’t perform,
    but life’s a stage.

    I can hear
    your expectations,
    the way you
    judge from fear—
    and manipulation.
    You see,
    I’ve dwelled within
    emotion.

    You can’t twist my thoughts,
    to change my view,
    set in stone, not glass—
    solid, not see-through.

    I’m no actor—
    I won’t perform
    for your applause.
    I won’t play my part,
    won’t fall in line.
    Won’t pledge allegiance,
    show no hollow pride.
    And you simply
    cannot convince me,
    to see no value
    in a human life.

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

  • Just Visiting – A Poem About Not Feeling at Home

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I’ve written around this feeling for years — in metaphors, in longing, in coded language about distance and departure.

    This is the first time I’ve said it this plainly.

    For most of my life, I’ve felt like a visitor in the place I was born. Not in a dramatic way. Not in a rebellious way. Just in a quiet, persistent way that never left.

    This piece isn’t about anger. It isn’t about rejection.

    It’s about finally naming what I’ve always known—
    that sometimes “home” is assigned to you,
    and sometimes it’s something you’re still moving toward.

    — Rowan Evans

    A lone traveler standing in an airport terminal at dusk, looking out at distant city lights with a suitcase beside them.
    Sometimes the place you’re born isn’t the place you’re meant to stay.

    Just Visiting
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’ve been talking about it a lot lately,
    this feeling of wanting to escape
    that I’ve had since I was just a baby.
    I was forced to call this place home,
    because this is where I was born—
    it never felt like home,
    just a place I was visiting.

    Every day in school—
    I’d recite the pledge,
    like a good
    little patriot
    should.
    But I didn’t believe in it,
    there was no allegiance in it.

    They say they’re proud to be an American,
    well me? I’ve never been,
    because this is just a place to me.
    I’ve said it before, once in this poem alone—
    this place has never been my home.

    And I’ve lived all across it.
    Never once have I have felt planted,
    no roots took hold.
    Felt like a tourist—
    in a place I was
    supposed to belong.

    But I’ve known for a while now,
    my place is not within these borders.
    This place will never be
    home for me.
    But it will always be
    a part of me. (Sadly.)

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

  • Disconnected Since Fourteen | Poetry About Belonging & Displacement

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem traces the moment when disconnection stopped being temporary and started feeling structural.
    At fourteen, I didn’t just feel out of place—I felt offline. Like my signal never quite reached the world I was standing in.

    The language of technology felt like the closest mirror for that experience: dropped signals, endless queues, systems that never respond. This isn’t nostalgia, and it isn’t blame—it’s recognition. Naming the feeling that followed me for years before I understood what it was.

    Some people search for belonging.
    Some of us search for a connection that was never stable to begin with.

    — Rowan Evans

    A person sitting alone in a dark room with glowing cables and signal symbols, representing emotional disconnection and longing for belonging.
    Some disconnections start early—and never fully resolve.

    Disconnected Since Fourteen
    (Lost in Queue)
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I used to sit alone, lost in thoughts
    of far off places—far from…
    home.

    I’d write about every one,
    write about them in my…
    poems.

    The way longing bled into art,
    art bled the words from my heart.
    It was the truth spilling—
    feeling homeless,
    since I was fourteen.

    Felt disconnected,
    like the Wi-Fi dropped.
    Mind static, dramatic,
    screaming like…
    dial-up.

    Trying to connect
    to somewhere that never answers.
    Server overloaded,
    lost in queue—
    endless, connection loop.

    I do not belong here.
    Everything feels wrong here.

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

  • Back to Darkseid — A Poem About Chaos, Identity, and the Mind

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem started as play.

    I wasn’t trying to be deep or careful — I was letting my brain sprint, letting pop culture, mythology, and intrusive thoughts collide on the page. Comics, villains, alter egos, masks — all the familiar metaphors we use when our minds feel too loud to live in quietly.

    What surprised me wasn’t the darkness, but the balance. This isn’t a descent — it’s a return with awareness. Standing in the light doesn’t mean pretending the shadows don’t exist. It means no longer fearing them.

    This is what it feels like when poetry stops being a tool and starts being a force — when the ink takes over, and you let it.

    Surreal illustration of a figure in shadow with ink tendrils rising up their spine, symbolizing chaos, identity, and creative obsession.
    Where chaos, identity, and ink collide.

    Back to Darkseid
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I walk in,
    ready to rock
    like a shock
    to the system.

    Watch me
    ghost ride the whip,
    hit you with the
    penance stare.

    Watch as you become
    hyper aware
    of every misdeed,
    and every sin seeps
    into the veins.

    It circulates
    until it hits
    the brain.

    Lights out.

    Silence.

    My noggin’s
    an asylum,
    I’m sick in the head.
    Coin flip of fate,
    I’m two-faced
    with my joker’s thoughts.

    I’m a dark knight,
    on a dark night—
    fighting the monsters
    that my mind creates.

    Don’t try to figure me out.
    I’m an enigma, a riddle
    with no answer.

    A twisted harlequin
    in a garden
    made by Ivy.
    Each petal unfurls,
    guiding—
    leading me back
    from the edge.

    Now I’m standing in the light,
    back to Darkseid—
    I no longer fear
    Apocalypse.

    Watch my ink
    twist into tendrils.
    Watch as they
    wrap around,
    and creep up
    my spine like venom.
    Watch as poetry
    slowly,
    takes over
    my mind.

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

  • Still Tilting Elsewhere | A Poem About Leaving, Longing, and Becoming

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some people grow up knowing exactly where they belong.
    Others grow up carrying a quiet sense of elsewhere—something felt long before it’s understood.

    This piece traces that feeling as it moved through me over time: the early moments of disconnection, the private planning, the slow patience of a dream that never burned out. It isn’t about leaving a place as much as it is about realizing that orientation matters more than arrival.

    Not all rebellions are loud.
    Some of them are lived quietly, for years, while you learn how to wait without letting the dream die.

    A person standing at dusk, facing a distant horizon with a compass motif in the sky, symbolizing longing and the pull toward somewhere else.
    Some dreams don’t disappear.
    They learn how to wait.

    Still Tilting Elsewhere
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I find myself
    drifting through my thoughts,
    not lost this time.

    I remember fourteen.
    Hi Hi Puffy—
    Ami and Yumi on the screen,
    seeing Tokyo streets,
    thinking “I hate this place.”
    It was the first time
    I felt the disconnect.

    Suddenly,
    I was hyperaware—
    I didn’t belong here.

    I remember fifteen.
    The first time
    I started planning.
    The first time
    I dreamed of jet engines,
    of taking off,
    making escape.

    I remember sixteen.
    Started speaking,
    manifesting—
    wishing it into existence.
    I remember seventeen,
    when my dream,
    became a quiet rebellion.

    And I was
    only becoming
    more aware,
    I didn’t belong here.

    I remember eighteen.
    Applying for a job,
    I knew I wouldn’t get.
    Simply for the chance to split.
    It was more about the “what if’s,”
    what if they saw something—
    what if they took a chance?

    And then—
    found family
    from the Philippines.
    Two girls of thirteen,
    they became like nieces to me.
    They were the spark
    that stoked the ember,
    that would simmer
    just beneath the surface.

    It’s been
    eighteen years
    since then.

    Eighteen years,
    and the ember never cooled.
    It lived in the quiet places—
    behind decisions,
    beneath routines,
    inside every map I drew
    that didn’t include here.

    And the dream didn’t fade.
    It learned patience.
    It learned silence.
    It learned to wait
    without dying.

    Now,
    I feel the shift again—
    the same quiet pull,
    the same soft rebellion,
    older now,
    but no less certain.

    I still carry that fourteen-year-old
    like a compass in my chest.
    I carry that seventeen-year-old
    like a promise I haven’t kept yet.
    I’ve grown,
    but the compass never changed.
    Every version of me
    still tilts toward somewhere…
    else.

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

  • Loki: A Poem About Transformation, Chaos, and the Norse Trickster God

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I wrote Loki on March 1st, 2025, not as a tribute to the pop-culture trickster, but to the old god—the one who exists in contradiction, liminality, and transformation. The Loki of myth is not tidy. He is not easily moralized. He is fire and fracture, ally and adversary, mother and monster, savior and destroyer. He is becoming.

    This poem is less about mythology as history and more about mythology as mirror. Loki has always represented what unsettles systems built on rigidity: fluidity, change, refusal. In many ways, he is the god of those who do not fit neatly into the halls they are born into. Those who are renamed as “problem” when what they truly are is uncontainable.

    Writing this was an act of reclamation. Of honoring the sacredness of contradiction. Of recognizing that to shift, to change, to refuse a single shape, is not betrayal—it is divinity in motion.

    A mystical, shapeshifting figure surrounded by fire and shadow, evoking the Norse god Loki and the power of transformation.
    Not bound by name. Not fixed in form. Becoming is the divine act.

    Loki
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I have been son and mother, father and daughter,
    A whisper on the wind, a fire in the dark.
    I have been the tempest and the calm,
    A shifting shape, a name unchained.

    I was never made to fit in their halls,
    So they twisted my name into a curse.
    They carved my legacy with hands that feared
    What could not be tamed, what would not kneel.

    They call me trickster, traitor, monster—
    But what is a god if not a story rewritten?
    What is truth when bound by mortal tongues,
    When my form is fluid as the rivers they drink?

    I have worn every face, walked every path,
    Yet still, they wish to bind me to one.
    But I am the echo of change, the chaos of fate,
    A dance between dusk and dawn.

    Try as they might to paint me still,
    I will slip through cracks, through time, through names.
    For I am not one, nor two—
    I am all, I am none…

    I am Loki.

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

  • Depths – A Poem About Writing, Survival, and the Fear of Feeling

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem isn’t about skill.
    It’s about orientation.

    Some people write to be understood.
    Some people write because silence feels lethal.

    This piece is for the ones who learned to live in the deep—
    who didn’t choose intensity so much as need it to breathe.

    It isn’t an accusation.
    It’s a recognition.

    Not everyone was taught that the ocean is real.

    A figure breathing underwater in deep blue ocean light, symbolizing emotional depth and survival.
    Some of us learned to breathe underwater.

    Depths
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I write
    like I might
    die, if I don’t.

    You write
    like you’re trying
    to pen
    the perfect quote.

    We are not the same.

    But you
    are not to blame.
    It’s not on you
    to carry
    society’s shame.

    They went shallow,
    and punished the depths.

    Closing Note

    Some of us learned
    to breathe underwater.

    Some of us
    were told
    the ocean
    was a lie.

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

  • No Resolutions: Choosing Certainty Over Reinvention This New Year

    Rowan Evans

    Not all growth looks like transformation.

    Some of it looks like standing still
    while the world insists you should become
    someone easier to digest.

    This year, I’m not becoming new.
    I’m becoming certain.

    Muted fireworks against a dark night sky on New Year’s Eve, symbolizing reflection and quiet certainty rather than celebration.
    Not all beginnings need reinvention.

    No Resolutions
    by Rowan Evans

    Happy New Year.

    I’m not entering the new year with resolutions.
    I’m entering it with boundaries, clarity, and a spine.

    I will still write what burns.
    I will still refuse to be neat.
    I will still love loudly, witness fiercely,
    and walk away from anything that asks me to be smaller.

    If that disappoints you—
    good.

    I’m not here to be improved.
    I’m here to be exactly myself.

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