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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: neurodivergent

  • Chemical X | A Poem About Creativity, Neurodivergent Thinking, and the Associative Mind

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    People often ask what inspires my writing, or how my mind moves from one idea to another so quickly.

    The honest answer is that I don’t think in straight lines.

    I think in association, in rhythm, in collision. One idea reminds me of another, not because they are logically connected, but because they feel connected in the moment they appear.

    This poem is built from that process.

    It began with something simple—the familiar phrase “sugar, spice, and everything nice.” But as I wrote, my mind immediately followed the same pattern it always does: connection, exaggeration, humor, memory, and cultural reference all colliding at once. What starts as something familiar quickly becomes something unpredictable.

    The title, Chemical X, comes from that idea.

    In The Powerpuff Girls, Chemical X is the unknown element that transforms something ordinary into something entirely different. For me, that “unknown element” is the way my mind blends thoughts, images, and meanings together in real time.

    This poem is not meant to be linear. It is meant to mirror the way my thoughts actually arrive: rapid, associative, sometimes chaotic, but always connected by feeling and intuition rather than structure.

    If it feels like a mix of humor, storytelling, sports commentary, and surreal imagery all at once—that’s intentional. That is the point.

    This is what happens when everything gets mixed together.

    This is Chemical X.

    — Rowan Evans

    A notebook and pen burst into colorful images of comics, sports, music, stars, and cartoons, symbolizing an imaginative mind making rapid connections.
    Some minds move in straight lines. Mine mixes everything together—and somehow, it all makes sense.

    Chemical X
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    They say “penny for your thoughts,”
    but it takes—two cents to talk.
    Go for a walk, a mile long, in my shoes—
    use my eyes, see the world through my view.

    I’ll etch it across the page,
    world view and all—
    because I’m the on the ball
    point pen, in an ink sprint.
    Usain Bolt, the way my mind went.

    To understand the rhythm,
    you’ve got to understand the mechanism.
    You’ve got to understand the mind
    behind the rhyme—

    my thoughts are rapid fire.

    Thirty round magazine,
    three-round burst—
    that’s the way my mind works.

    I can jump from cartoons
    to comic books,
    music to sports—

    sugar, spice,
    and everything nice.

    A round of applause, Johnny—
    Bravo, you completed the Quest.
    You gained experience and leveled up.
    Still, it wasn’t enough—

    because I’m a two-way threat—
    like my name is Shohei.

    Bitch, I’m the Babe.

    At four years old,
    I was almost tossed
    out of the game.

    I was a menace—
    call me, Dennis.

    Two Hubbles
    strapped to my face,
    look up—see space.

    Fingers curled
    gripping the chain link—
    a bad call, a blind ump,
    a small child
    blind as I was,
    offering their eyes up
    like I was—

    trying to help?
    Maybe.

    Trying to insult?

    Of course…

    it’s sports…

    I was Dexter
    in the lab again,
    pen to pad again,
    and I gave
    all I had to give—

    Victor Frankenstein
    is at it again,
    patchwork metaphors
    and images galore—

    villagers are going
    to be afraid for sure.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Crossing the Sea (No Metaphor Left Behind)]
    A deeply personal poem about relocation, longing, and the realization that some truths naturally arrive through metaphor—even when we try to leave it behind.

    [Only Waiting (No Metaphor Left Behind)]
    The second poem in the No Metaphor Left Behind series, exploring the quiet ache of growing up in a place that never truly felt like home—and finally saying aloud what years of metaphor had been trying to express.

    [Translating What I Feel]
    A poem about the invisible process of turning emotion into imagery, imagery into language, and language into poetry. An intimate reflection on creativity, loneliness, and twenty-three years of learning to translate what the heart feels.

    [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.

    [Frankenstein’s Monster (and I’m the Doctor)]
    Some poems are built to make a point. Others are built to reveal the mechanism. Frankenstein’s Monster (and I’m the Doctor) explores associative thinking, creative chaos, and the strange process of stitching disconnected ideas into something alive.

    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]

  • Between Worlds – A Poem About Mental Illness, Identity & Survival | Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece is the closest I’ve come to writing the truth of my internal war without softening it. Between Worlds is about self-violence—the way the mind learns your weak spots, remembers the old wounds, and knows exactly where to cut. It’s a poem about relapse, about memory, about survival, and about the strange loneliness that follows healing.

    It speaks to the years where I wasn’t sure I’d make it. The hospital walls. The padded quiet. The fluorescent lights humming through the silence. It speaks to dissociation, to identity, to queerness, and to the mythic distance I’ve always felt between who I am and the world I live in.

    This poem isn’t a cry for help—it’s a record of survival. It isn’t tragedy for tragedy’s sake—it’s truth. It’s the reality that healing isn’t linear, that progress has shadows, and that sometimes the loudest battles are fought in the mind no one else can see.

    If you know this feeling—of standing in your own skin like it never quite fits, of fighting thoughts with thoughts, of loving your existence even when you question your place in it—then I hope you feel seen here.

    Because none of us are alone in the in-between.

    — Rowan Evans

    Nonbinary person standing between a hospital hallway and a star-filled night sky, symbolizing dissociation and identity between worlds.
    Between Worlds — artwork representing Rowan Evans’ poem about surviving mental illness, dissociation, and identity beyond binaries.

    Between Worlds
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Why do I
    always try
    to pick a fight
    with me?

    You’d think I’d know,
    by now, just how
    quick I’ll slip
    an insult
    under the ribs.

    I’ll hit
    every single fear,
    twist them
    like a knife—
    until I’m
    on my knees,
    gasping,
    spitting blood.

    I don’t fight fair.
    I target old wounds,
    tear at what’s
    already healed.
    I’ll fuck around
    and send myself
    back ten years—
    back to hospital walls
    and quiet rooms,
    where the only sound
    was the fluorescent hum.

    Where time dissolved…
    where clocks stopped
    ticking.

    But I walked out
    of those halls—
    didn’t I?

    Didn’t I?

    But what if I didn’t?
    What if I’m still locked inside,
    in a padded room
    with the jacket
    strapped tight?
    Thoughts confined,
    so the words
    won’t escape.

    Writing poems
    in my head,
    just to pass
    the time.

    I’ve been alive,
    but dead inside.
    And I’ll be honest:
    I’ve died
    inside my mind
    more than
    a dozen times.

    I just wanted escape.

    Escape from pain,
    from feeling misplaced—
    I just wanted
    to belong.

    But it’s like—
    something is wrong here.
    Why don’t I
    feel like
    I belong here?

    Why does everything feel
    a half inch to the left—
    like I’m living inside
    the echo of myself?

    Like I’m watching my life
    from behind fogged glass,
    palms against the surface,
    screaming—
    but no sound
    passes through.

    Sometimes I swear
    the world forgets I’m here,
    and sometimes
    I do too.

    Maybe it’s because
    every room I walk into,
    I’m half a ghost already—
    too queer, too quiet,
    too soft, too strange.
    Too fucking much
    for everyone
    but me.

    Maybe that’s why
    the fight never ends—
    because I’m still trying
    to prove I deserve
    the space I take up,
    even in my own skin.

    So maybe I don’t belong here
    because I was born
    between worlds—
    not alive, not dead,
    not human, not myth,
    not safe, not ruined.

    Maybe my bones remember
    a home I never had,
    and every heartbeat since
    has been an attempt
    to map
    my way back.

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