Author’s Note

There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from constantly trying to explain why you feel disconnected from the place you’re supposed to belong to.

Not disconnected from life.

Not disconnected from people.

Disconnected from alignment.

Like your internal compass keeps pointing somewhere the world around you doesn’t understand.

This piece came from that feeling.

From being awake while everyone else sleeps. From feeling emotionally out of phase with your surroundings. From trying to explain, over and over again, that displacement is sometimes deeper than geography.

Some people hear that and assume it’s escapism.

But for me, it’s never been about fantasy.

It’s about recognition.

There are places, cultures, people, and ways of existing that resonate with something in me more naturally than the environment I was born into ever has.

And after writing about that feeling for years, I’m finally starting to understand:

maybe the repetition wasn’t obsession.

Maybe it was direction.

— Rowan Evans

East Knows My Name
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I sit awake again—
disconnected
from the world around me.
The silence
surrounding.

It’s not fear
I feel.

It’s something else.

Something deeper.

Fear sits at the surface,
I feel this in my bones.

I look around
at this house—

supposed to be a home.

I sit awake again—
up since six AM.
The disconnect
sounds like static,
a distorted hum.

When I walk outside,
I don’t feel like I belong.

Do you know what it’s like—

to feel one step
to the left…

all the time?

It doesn’t feel right.

I sit awake again—
begging my words
to come.
I’m sick of only speaking
in ink—

I want to speak again.
I have things to say.

But my words…

they don’t align.

They are shifted,
just like I am
most of the time.
It’s not my fault—
I’m not the cause.

It’s the world around me,
the people surrounding.

American mouth
but my mind is not.

Stuck in the west,
but long for the east—
it’s the way
my heart beats.

I try to explain it
in piece after piece,
poem after poem.

I’ve written the disconnect,
time and time again—

I’ve written about being
destined to leave
since fourteen—

felt disconnected,
like the Wi-Fi dropped.
Mind static, dramatic,
screaming like…

I won’t repeat myself—
not for you,
not for emphasis.

Because that’s not
what the rhythm is.

It’s a compass
with no magnetic north,
so the needle drifts
east of course.

California in my blood,
westside in my veins—

but it’s the east
that knows my name.

Journey into the Hexverse…

[Out of Sync]
A reflective free verse poem about emotional displacement, shifting sleep cycles, and feeling spiritually drawn toward another side of the world.

[Two Americans]
What does it mean to share a country, a language, and still feel completely different? Two Americans explores identity, culture, and the quiet disconnect between people who should feel the same—but don’t.

[None of It Means a Thing]
Success, fame, and money don’t mean much without someone to share them with. None of It Means a Thing explores love, purpose, and what truly makes life feel complete.

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