Author’s Note

Lessons Without Kindness is about the strange education that can come from losing someone who once felt like your entire world.

This isn’t really a poem about getting even. It’s about looking back at a relationship that changed, recognizing the games, the silence, and the ways I allowed myself to become smaller just to keep someone else comfortable—and realizing that I don’t live that way anymore.

The person who taught me these lessons never intended to be my teacher. They didn’t sit me down and explain what I needed to learn. They simply gave me an experience harsh enough that I eventually learned it myself.

Sometimes the most important lessons don’t come from kindness, wisdom, or good intentions.

Sometimes they come from realizing what you will never allow yourself to become again.

— Rowan Evans

Lessons Without Kindness
Poetry by Rowan Evans

There was a time when
you were my world,
everything was fine and
we really did love each other,
or so I thought—
yeah, we’d always talk—constantly,
I was always thinking of you,
and I thought
you thought about me too.
Maybe you did—once,

then you changed
and started playing games—
you tried to get under my skin,
pit me against him.
But here’s the thing—
he was never gonna win.
I mean, truly,
the only real loser was you—
because in doing what you did,
you lost me too.

And I’m not saying I was a prize,
but I really was a catch for you—
I put up with too much,
and spoke up too little.
But I don’t do that anymore.
I don’t shrink so someone else can feel tall.
I don’t bend so someone else can feel right.
I don’t stay quiet so someone else can stay comfortable.

You taught me that.
Not intentionally—
but lessons don’t need kindness
to be true,
just a student and a teacher—
that was me and you.

Journey into the Hexverse

[The Sacred Timeline]
From childhood stories about Dragon Ball Z, Power Rangers, and Pokémon to gothic cathedrals, ravens, roses, identity, healing, and experimentation, The Sacred Timeline traces how Rowan Evans’s relationship with the pen evolved across thirty-six years—and how the ink remained while the writer kept changing.

[The Metaphor Machine]
A poem that takes apart its own machinery as it runs—breaking lines, breaking thoughts, and following metaphors from moonlight to tides, oceans, shorelines, and city streets.

[Louder Than the Rain]
A short confessional poem about the overwhelming noise of anxious thoughts, the strange silence of feeling alone in a crowded room, and finding a way to translate pain into words.

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