Author’s Note

There is a particular kind of heartbreak that doesn’t have a villain.

Sometimes nobody betrayed you.

Nobody lied.

Nobody promised you something they couldn’t give.

Sometimes someone simply exists, speaks to you, makes you feel something—and your heart decides to build an entire mythology around it.

That is where Poet’s Curse came from.

I’ve joked before about having a poet’s curse: the tendency to fall into feelings quickly, to hear a little beauty in someone’s voice and suddenly find myself wading into the waves after it. But beneath the joke is something I’ve had to become more honest about.

Sometimes my heartbreak is partly mine.

Not because I was wrong to feel what I felt, but because I have a habit of giving pieces of myself away before I’ve figured out whether there is somewhere safe for them to land.

The person in this poem didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. She didn’t promise me forever. She didn’t lead me somewhere just to abandon me. She talked—and I listened. I heard a siren’s song, and
I chose to wade into the water.

So this isn’t a poem about blaming her.

It’s about looking at myself afterward and admitting something uncomfortable:

I learned how to hold on long before I learned how to let go.

And maybe that’s the real curse.

Not that I love too deeply.

Not that I feel too much.

But that once I give someone a piece of my heart, I don’t always know how to take my hands away from the fire.

Sometimes the only way forward is to stop calling that weakness a curse and start learning the skill I never had—

how to let go without becoming less capable of love.

— Rowan Evans

Poet’s Curse
Poetry by Rowan Evans

Here we go again
it’s another season of sin,
the poet’s back
heartbroken with a pen.

Yeah, went and fuckin’
did it again—

it’s my fault
my heart is cracked,
with pieces missing.

You see, I give them away
too freely, it’s such a pain
to be me, I get hooked
too easily—

she did nothing wrong,
she didn’t lead me on, just talked
and I heard a siren’s song—

I waded into the waves,
prayed for things to change.

Pardon the moment of slowness,
give me a moment while I own this
and take accountability for my part
in breaking my heart.

It’s a poet’s curse—

I only learned how to hold on.
I never learned how to let go,
my feelings and emotion
like hot coals in my hands.

Journey into the Hexverse…

[When I Fall]
When I Fall is a vulnerable poem about loving without reservation, feeling everything deeply, and refusing to make the heart smaller just because wholehearted love can sometimes lead to loneliness and pain.

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