Tag: neurodivergent writer

  • Author’s Note

    This piece began exactly where it sounds like it did:

    With a headache.

    Not a dramatic one. Not a poetic one.

    Just the kind that makes it difficult to focus. The kind where every sound feels a little sharper than it should. The kind where your thoughts stop moving cleanly and start dragging their feet.

    I sat down intending to write about that feeling.

    But somewhere along the way, the poem became less about pain and more about disconnection.

    Because what struck me wasn’t the headache itself.

    It was the strange sensation of feeling slightly removed from the world around me.

    Like reality had taken half a step backward.

    Like I was still present, but not entirely anchored.

    The images of echoes, warped thoughts, blurred edges, and slipping focus all came from trying to describe that experience as honestly as possible.

    What surprised me was where the poem ended.

    I started by writing about a physical sensation.

    I ended by writing about recognition.

    About the desire to feel fully present again.

    To feel connected to yourself, your surroundings, and the moment you’re living in.

    The title comes from that realization.

    Because sometimes discomfort doesn’t make us feel absent.

    It makes us feel forgotten.

    Not by other people, necessarily, but by the world itself.

    As though we’ve drifted just far enough away from ourselves to notice the distance.

    And all we can do is sit quietly and wait for clarity to return.

    For the world to remember us again.

    Rowan Evans


    A solitary person sitting quietly with a headache as the world around them blurs and fades into soft echoes of light.
    “Some days it isn’t pain that feels overwhelming—it’s the distance between yourself and the world around you.”

    For the World to Remember Me Again
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’ve got a headache,
    can’t see straight—
    vision blurring at the edges.

    It’s the kind of headache—
    where even the silence
    is loud.

    And I sit in it,
    this ringing hush,
    like the world has stepped back
    and left me echoing alone.

    It’s like—
    every sound echoes
    in a cavernous skull.

    Like my thoughts are ricocheting
    off the walls of me,
    coming back warped,
    a little less mine
    each time—

    the rhythm
    loses a little bit
    of its rhyme.

    Every pulse is thunder,
    every heartbeat a warning—
    a storm gathering
    behind my eyes.

    I try to focus,
    but the edges keep slipping—
    like my mind is smudging
    under its own weight.

    So I breathe,
    slow and deliberate,
    hoping the world will settle
    back into focus—

    or at least…

    stop slipping away.

    And I wait,
    quiet as I can,
    for the world
    to remember me again.


    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Before My Feet Touch the Floor]
    What happens when your dreams feel more real than your waking life? Before My Feet Touch the Floor explores the strange grief of waking up, the lingering memory of dream selves, and the quiet question of which version of us is truly real.

    [Recognizes Home]
    A free-verse poem exploring the difference between love as dependency and love as choice. It challenges the idea that love must be need-based, instead centering the quiet strength of choosing someone while still remaining whole on your own.

    [Monster Theology]
    What if the monsters under the bed weren’t monsters at all? Monster Theology explores difference, belonging, and the human tendency to fear what we don’t understand through a conversation with the creatures we’ve spent our lives imagining.

    [Not Rebuilding You]
    A poem about love as an act of presence rather than rescue. Through construction imagery, Not Rebuilding You explores trust, devotion, emotional safety, and the quiet work of building a foundation strong enough for healing to grow.

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

  • Author’s Note

    Sometimes writing becomes survival before you even realize that’s what it’s turned into.

    This piece came from the realization that I often disappear into craft when my mind gets too loud. I’ll drift into rhyme schemes, metaphors, cadence, imagery—anything that helps me stay afloat emotionally.

    Not because I’m trying to escape life completely.

    More because writing gives shape to feelings that otherwise feel impossible to carry.

    A lot of this poem revolves around rootlessness: the feeling of growing in soil that never fully nurtured you, while still refusing to break under the pressure of it.
    And I think that distinction matters.

    Struggling to root yourself somewhere doesn’t mean you’re weak. Sometimes it simply means the environment around you was never meant to hold the version of you that was trying to grow.

    So this piece became less about collapse and more about persistence.

    About continuing to create meaning even while feeling displaced.

    About refusing to let your environment define your voice.

    Rowan Evans


    A solitary figure stands near the ocean at dusk holding a notebook while storm clouds part above exposed roots in cracked earth.
    Some roots fail because the soil was never meant to hold them.

    The Soil Won’t Write Me
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’m sorry—
    I got lost again.

    Drifting between lines,
    bouncing between rhymes—
    if life’s a game,
    I keep forgetting to play.

    Too focused on the craft,
    lost sight of the life behind it.

    Don’t worry—
    I’m not in danger.

    I’ve just gone quiet—
    trying to silence
    a mental riot.

    Thoughts get too loud,
    become a stranger to myself.

    I get lost in the craft,
    turn the pen to a life raft.

    Ink crashes
    like waves overhead,
    carrying secrets
    in the cadence
    of the tides.

    Because every rhyme
    is a shoreline
    on ocean’s edge.

    And this is how it works for me—

    it starts small
    then quickly grows—
    a seed
    into a tree.

    A tree big and tall,
    but the foundation is weak—
    there are no roots here
    to anchor me.

    They say I’d waver
    in the slightest breeze.

    But that’s not true,
    just because I have no roots—
    doesn’t mean that I will falter,
    it just means
    life won’t come with ease.

    It just means
    this soil wasn’t right for me—

    and these people
    cannot speak for me,
    I write what I think
    in ink and let that
    carry what I mean.

    All that means—
    I won’t let this soil write for me.

    And I’ll deal with
    this stuck feeling,
    that I feel
    deep inside—
    in the only way
    I know how…

    I’ve got to write it out,
    can’t ignore it.

    Got to ride it out.


    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [The Needle Doesn’t Point North]
    “The Needle Doesn’t Point North” is a deeply personal free verse poem about displacement, identity, and spending a lifetime feeling emotionally disconnected from the place you were born while being drawn toward distant shores.

    [Weather in My Chest]
    “Weather in My Chest” is a free verse poem about emotional hyperawareness, social tension, and the quiet experience of carrying internal storms into rooms that react before a singl[e word is spoken.

    [Sound as a Vessel]
    “Sound as a Vessel” is a free verse poem about music as emotional architecture, exploring how international artists and soundscapes shaped identity, creativity, memory, and poetic voice.

    [Just Knowing You Has Been Enough]
    “Just Knowing You Has Been Enough” is a deeply vulnerable free verse poem about unspoken love, emotional fear, coded confessions, and the quiet truth of caring for someone without needing perfection in return.

    [The Streets I Walk When I Sleep]
    “The Streets I Walk When I Sleep” is a deeply intimate free verse poem about recurring dreams, emotional connection, longing across distance, and the strange feeling of remembering places and moments that have never happened in waking life.

    [Memories From a Life Yet to Come]
    Some dreams feel less like fantasy and more like memory. “Memories From a Life Yet to Come” is a reflective free verse poem about longing, displacement, emotional alignment, and the strange comfort of recognizing yourself more clearly in dreams than in waking life

    [Separate Timelines]
    “Separate Timelines” is a surreal and deeply introspective free verse poem about emotional distance, time zones, vulnerability, and the fear of losing a connection that already feels meaningful before the words are ever spoken aloud.

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

  • Of Ashes & Reverence 
    A Dark Romance Novella 
     
    Lilith has mastered survival. Her world is built from ashes—walls forged in betrayal, silence, and scars that still whisper. To her, love has always meant vulnerability. And vulnerability has always meant pain. 
     
    Gabriel sees past the armor. He’s patient, steady, and everything she’s never dared believe in. Their connection is undeniable—burning hot, terrifyingly tender. But for Lilith, every touch is a test. Every kind word, a crack in her foundation. 
     
    As passion ignites and buried wounds resurface, both must confront the ghosts they carry. For Lilith, it means risking more than just her body—it means surrendering control, and trusting her heart. 
    For Gabriel, it means holding on… without holding too tight. 
     
    A tale of trauma and tenderness, power and vulnerability, Of Ashes & Reverence is a darkly intimate journey through pain, healing, and the radical, luminous act of being truly seen. 
     
    — 
     
    Author’s Note:  
    Welcome to Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism 
     
    — 
     
    This is more than a love story. It is a confession wrapped in shadows, a resurrection of softness from the ashes of pain. 
     
    Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism is a genre I created to hold space for the parts of us that ache and burn and bloom all at once. It is where gothic atmosphere meets emotional vulnerability, where romance is both sanctuary and storm. These stories are written with open wounds and hopeful hearts, where love doesn’t fix the broken—but chooses to stay anyway. 
     
    Here, you’ll find characters who carry trauma like sacred relics, who speak with trembling honesty, who ache for connection even as they fear it. The intimacy is raw, sometimes rough, but always reverent. These are tales of worship and reckoning, of shadows and survival. Of becoming known
     
    Of Ashes & Reverence is my first full offering in this genre. It is a story born of my own confessions, fears, and longings—an altar built from grief and devotion. 
     
    If you see yourself here—if you’ve ever felt too much, wanted too deeply, or survived too quietly—then this story is for you. 
     
    With tenderness and truth
    Rowan Evans


    More Coming Soon…