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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: psychological poetry

  • Returning to My Bones | A Poem About Dreams, Waking, and Quiet Grief

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I’ve written a lot of poems about dreams.

    At this point, it’s probably one of the most consistent threads running through my work.

    The reason is simple:

    Dreams don’t feel imaginary to me.

    They feel remembered.

    Not while I’m fully awake. Not after I’ve had time to process them. But in those first moments between sleeping and waking, there’s often a strange overlap where the emotions arrive before reality does.

    For a brief moment, everything feels true.

    The conversation happened. The place existed. The person was there.

    Then awareness returns.

    The room comes back. The walls come back. The weight of the body comes back.

    And with it comes the realization that none of it happened.

    That’s the feeling this poem is trying to capture.

    Not the dream itself, but the return from it.

    The title became the key.

    Because waking up doesn’t feel like opening my eyes.

    It feels like returning to my bones.

    Returning to gravity. Returning to limitation. Returning to the version of reality that can be touched and verified.

    The strange thing is that the emotions don’t disappear when the dream does.

    The dream fades.

    The feelings stay.

    And sometimes that lingering feeling creates a kind of grief that is difficult to explain to people who don’t experience dreams this way.

    A quiet grief.

    Not because something real was lost.

    But because, for a moment, it felt real enough to matter.

    — Rowan Evans

    A solitary figure sits beside a moonlit bay as the dreamlike shoreline gradually fades into a quiet bedroom, symbolizing the emotional transition from dreaming to waking.
    Some dreams disappear with the sunrise. Others stay with us long after we’ve returned to our bones.

    Returning to My Bones
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    The moon shimmers over the bay,
    suspended in the sky—
    the way I feel suspended in her eyes.

    And it makes me feel crazy,
    because she’s never looked at me—
    not really, not in reality.

    It’s only happened in dreams.

    That’s when I drift
    between awake—
    and asleep.

    This is when
    my mind
    starts to
    wander.

    Then it snaps.

    I’m back in my room again.

    The moon loses its shimmer,
    the bay fades from view.
    My body tenses as I become
    aware again,
    of the mattress beneath me—

    of the walls that enclose me.

    I feel the weight pressing in.
    The reality of returning
    to my bones.
    It’s a quiet grief—
    realizing that the emotions
    will linger,
    but the truth is
    it never happened.

    And somehow,
    that hurts the most.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Maybe You’ll Want Me Too]
    A poem about the subtle shift from knowing someone to constantly thinking about them. Through humor, metaphor, and confession, Maybe You’ll Want Me Too explores affection, attachment, and the fragile hope that being wanted might matter more than being needed.

    [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.

    [Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3)]
    A moonlit shoreline, a rowboat full of ducks, a piggybank with no cents, and a confession hidden in plain sight. Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3) explores how humor, wordplay, and absurdity can become a side door to vulnerability when the truth feels too difficult to say directly.

    [L Words & Heart]
    A playful, self-aware poem about love, longing, loyalty, and the quiet ways another person can reshape our inner world. What begins as humor slowly reveals a heartfelt confession about affection, imagination, and the faces that linger in our dreams.

    [Just Before Waking]
    A street that feels familiar. A life that hasn’t happened yet. Just Beyond Waking explores the fragile space between dreams, memory, longing, and the quiet feeling that some futures are already waiting for us.

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

  • The Unkindness Descends | A Gothic Poem About Ravens & Transformation

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece began with a single image:

    a person kneeling on broken marble while ravens circled overhead.

    From there, the symbolism unfolded naturally.

    Ravens have carried countless meanings across cultures and mythologies throughout history. Omens. Messengers. Witnesses. Archivists of the dead. Harbingers of transformation. Keepers of memory. In some traditions they are feared. In others, revered.

    I didn’t want to narrow them down to one interpretation here.

    What interested me more was the tension between collapse and observation—the feeling of being seen during moments of unraveling, and the uncertainty of whether those watching forces are condemning you, mourning you, studying you, guiding you, or simply recording what happened.

    That’s why the poem never fully explains the ravens.

    Even the collective noun “unkindness” became important to me while writing. It carries two meanings at once: a literal group of ravens, and the emotional atmosphere surrounding the speaker. The word itself becomes part of the tension.

    By the end of the piece, the ravens remain unresolved intentionally.

    They part. They watch. They follow.

    Whether that final image feels threatening, protective, spiritual, psychological, or transformative depends almost entirely on how the reader chooses to see them.

    And I think that uncertainty is the point.

    — Rowan Evans

    A lone figure surrounded by ravens on broken marble in a dark Gothic setting.
    They descended like witnesses—whether to condemn, mourn, guide, or remember was never made clear.

    The Unkindness Descends
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I kneel on broken marble,
    the unkindness circling overhead.
    Ravens watching as I come undone.

    Witnesses to my fall,
    the ravens land—
    one by one,
    the unkindness descends
    upon me.

    I am lost in the black mass—
    wing and feather flapping
    as ravens move to circle me.

    My eyes scanned the ravens
    as they surrounded me,
    each uttered something—
    a word, a message.

    Perhaps, it was a lesson?

    Maybe I read it all wrong,
    and they were just keeping record—
    witnesses to my collapse.

    I rose to my feet.
    The ravens watched me.

    I moved.
    They parted
    like the Red Sea.

    Each step forward,
    their eyes traced my path.
    As I moved through,
    they closed in behind me.

    Following.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [I Write Cathedrals]
    “I Write Cathedrals” explores faith, doubt, belonging, and the search for meaning beyond certainty. Through Gothic spiritual imagery and confessional reflection, the poem examines how writing can become a sacred space for questioning, wonder, and the people who feel displaced by traditional structures of belief.

    [Drought Resistant]
    “Drought Resistant” is a confessional poem about growing up poor in California’s Central Valley—where triple-digit heat, EBT cycles, dry ramen, and hard landscapes become part of emotional memory. Blending humor, slang, and working-class reflection, the poem explores survival, regional identity, and complicated love for the place that shaped you.

    [Escaped to the Page]
    “Escaped to the Page” is a confessional meta-poem about individuality, artistic identity, and surviving through writing. Blending sharp confidence with emotional vulnerability, the poem explores the difference between shared labels and lived experience—and the ways art becomes inseparable from the life behind it.

    [Ink as a Second Mouth]
    “Ink as a Second Mouth” explores the distance between thought and speech, and the ways writing can become a form of survival, continuity, and self-translation. Through confessional imagery and reflections on growth, identity, and articulation, the poem examines what it means to keep becoming through language.

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

  • Weather in My Chest | A Poem About Emotional Sensitivity and Social Tension

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some people can walk into a room and never notice the atmosphere change.

    I’ve never been one of them.

    I notice tone shifts, silence, tension, body language, eye contact, emotional static—sometimes before a word is even spoken. Rooms have always felt alive to me in that way, almost like weather systems with their own pressure and temperature.

    For a long time, I thought that sensitivity meant something was wrong with me.

    But over time, I realized I wasn’t imagining things. I was just noticing things other people either missed or ignored.

    This piece came from that feeling: walking into spaces and immediately sensing the emotional climate shift around you.

    Not because you’re dangerous. Not because you want attention.

    But because some people carry storms quietly, and other people instinctively react to the pressure.

    The important part is this:

    Not every storm is destructive.

    Sometimes thunder is just thunder. Sometimes lightning never comes.

    — Rowan Evans

    A solitary figure stands quietly in a crowded room as storm clouds and atmospheric tension subtly gather around them.
    Some people don’t bring storms into rooms—they just notice the pressure before everyone else does.

    Weather in My Chest
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I enter rooms and I can feel
    the weather shift,
    the emotion gets thick
    like humidity—
    and the temperature
    begins to rise.

    And eyes
    move like clouds
    across the sky
    as they follow me.

    Drifting toward
    the horizon line,
    at the edge of the room.

    I can hear the whispers
    rumble like thunder,
    as the questions
    begin to spin.

    “What are they doing here?”
    “Who invited them?”

    I’ve learned
    to stand still
    in the middle of it,
    let the noise
    break around me
    like rain on concrete.

    “Why are they so quiet?”
    “Are they judging us?”

    They don’t know
    I’m not here
    to bring the storm—

    I just carry weather
    in my chest,
    and rooms react
    how they react.

    I’m not the danger
    they whisper about—

    I’m just the one
    who notices
    the temperature
    before anyone else does.

    They don’t realize
    I’ve felt this
    my whole life—
    rooms shifting,
    eyes gathering,
    like weather
    drawn to heat.

    I feel the pressure
    drop behind me,
    the way people tense
    like they’re waiting—

    for lightning
    that never comes.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [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]

  • Lost the Plot | A Poem About Identity, Control, and Rewritten Stories

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    There’s a strange kind of disorientation that comes from feeling like your life should make sense… but doesn’t.

    Like you missed a chapter.
    Or something important got cut before you ever had the chance to understand it.

    Lost the Plot leans into that feeling–but not just on a personal level. It questions what happens when the narrative itself isn’t entirely yours. When the direction shifts, not because it should… but because something behind the scenes decided it needed to.

    We’re often told that confusion is internal.
    That if we feel lost, it’s something we need to fix within ourselves.

    But what if part of that feeling comes from the story constantly being rewritten?
    From forces we don’t see, shaping outcomes we’re expected to accept?

    This piece sits in that space–between personal disconnection and a growing awareness the “plot” might not be as natural as it seems.

    Sometimes it’s not that you lost your way.

    Sometimes… the story changed without you.

    — Rowan Evans

    Person standing on a broken film set with scattered reels and a looming studio above, symbolizing loss of identity and control
    What happens when the story isn’t yours anymore?

    Lost the Plot
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I feel like I’ve been
    getting lost a lot lately.

    Like I’ve forgotten
    who I was,
    who I am—
    who I was becoming.

    I’m feeling like
    I’ve lost the plot,
    like the studio
    lost the reel
    that we shot.

    No longer
    can I see
    where I began.

    We got cancelled
    before we
    got going.

    We never saw an end.

    But we weren’t
    cancelled because of
    interest.

    We were cancelled
    because the studio
    got scared.

    Ratings were good.
    The audience cared.

    But they cared too much.

    It was causing
    connection,
    so the studio
    had to change
    direction.

    The studio,
    needs the divide—
    keeps people
    scared and wide-eyed.

    So there’s always
    someone—
    to point to,
    to name as the bad guy.

    The boogeyman.

    So we look to the stars,
    as if they could solve
    the problems.

    As if it wasn’t
    the studio—
    the writer’s room
    behind every decision.

    It was them—

    in the writer’s room,
    rewriting endings
    we never got to reach.

    Ratings be damned.

    The show goes on—

    we just don’t
    exist in it anymore.

    Journey into the Hexverse!

    [Another Fire]
    A powerful poem exploring global chaos, systemic inequality, and emotional exhaustion in a world where conflict grows faster than it can be understood.

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

  • Can’t Tell the Difference | A Poem About Dreams, Memory, and Love

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Sometimes the mind doesn’t separate things as cleanly as we’d like.

    Memory, imagination, longing–they start to overlap. What you’ve felt in dreams can become just as vivid as something you’ve physically lived. And after a while, the line between the two doesn’t disappear… it just stops mattering in the same way.

    Can’t Tell the Difference lives in the space.

    It’s not about confusion in a chaotic sense–it’s about the quiet disorientation of something feeling real enough to hold weight, even if you prove it happened the way you remember.

    Because emotion doesn’t always follow logic.

    And sometimes the question isn’t “did this happen?”
    It’s “why did it feel like it did?”

    — Rowan Evans

    Person standing above a glowing city at night, with blurred dreamlike figures walking hand-in-hand below, symbolizing the line between memory and reality.
    Where memory and dreams blur—
    and feeling becomes its own kind of truth.

    Can’t Tell the Difference
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I stand on the edge
    of what’s real—
    and what isn’t.

    But I can’t tell
    the difference.

    Is it a dream,
    or a memory?

    I don’t know anymore.

    I’ve held your hand before.
    I know I have—
    there is no way,
    that was just a dream.

    It was too real.

    I could feel
    the sweat on your skin,
    the heat in the air—
    humidity clinging,

    busy streets alive
    with Jeepney beeps.

    So what is real?
    Is it what you’ve lived—
    or what you feel?

    Was it real
    or a dream,
    when I looked you in the eye,
    and said—

    I love you.

    Because I felt that.

    I felt the words
    leave my lips—

    I love you…

    echoing,
    like a record skipped.

    Every night
    in my dreams,
    I meet you
    on city streets.

    We walk,
    we talk,
    hand in hand—

    conversations
    only I could imagine.

    We talk about life,
    but never the future—
    just the now.

    The current moment.

    Because we move the same—
    drifting forward,
    unchained.

    And still—

    I stand on the edge
    of what’s real,
    and what isn’t.

    And I can’t tell
    the difference.

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

  • Through the Shattered Glass II: A Haunting Poetic Thriller by B.D. Nightshade

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Through the Shattered Glass II is a continuation of a fractured exploration of memory, trauma, and lingering presence. Written from the perspective of the “other” in a haunting, spectral voice, it blurs the line between witness and participant, reality and echo. The poem is meant to unsettle and mesmerize, leaving questions unanswered—because some truths exist only in fragments.

    Shattered mirror reflecting faint ghostly silhouettes in a dimly lit, dark room with scattered papers.
    Through the shards of memory, the echoes remain…

    Through the Shattered Glass II
    Fragmented Nightmare: Through Another’s Eyes
    Poetry by B.D. Nightshade

    Shards.
    Red, silver, sharp—
    I cut my palm on what isn’t there.

    A laugh—too low, too close,
    slips beneath the floorboards,
    slithers into my chest.

    I remember the air.
    Cold, metallic.
    Or was it hot, burning my throat?

    Footsteps echo backward,
    though I never moved.
    A hand grazes my shoulder—
    I recoil. No one is there.
    Yet the pulse in my veins
    screams I am not alone.

    Mirror.
    Fractured.
    Eyes staring—mine? Yours?
    I reach—
    and the reflection spits me out.

    Something drips.
    Clock? Heart? Faucet?
    I follow.
    Red. Wet. Wrong.

    A scream.
    Or a whisper.
    Or a laugh I know too well.

    Memory fractures—
    two bodies, one space,
    and the space is infinite.
    The other, the same,
    or just a shadow trailing mine?

    I crouch over shards,
    bare feet sticky with nothing and everything.
    Hands tremble—they belong to someone else.
    Or maybe to both of us.

    A name?
    No.
    Nothing.
    Just the ache of presence,
    the itch of absence,
    the smell of iron in the hollow of air.

    I feel her—
    or him—
    or the echo—
    pressing against me from everywhere
    and nowhere.

    Was it laughter?
    Was it pain?
    Was it memory, or the ghost of memory?

    Shadows twist.
    I am falling.
    Or rising.
    Or sinking in place.

    The floor tilts.
    The walls bend.
    My pulse, a hammer.
    My breath, a blade.
    My scream—
    stuck.

    Still.
    Here.

    Shards of me, shards of you,
    swirling, bleeding,
    unclaimed,
    untouchable,
    and the world bends around the space
    where we were—or were not.

    And I—
    I remain.

    Closing Note

    The fragments linger. Perhaps you have glimpsed them, perhaps you have not. In the spaces between breath and shadow, in the shards of memory that refuse to settle, the story continues—both everywhere and nowhere. Beware what haunts the mirrors.

    Journey into the Hexverse

    Through the Shattered Glass — B.D. Nightshade
    Step back into the shattered world and follow the echoes… Can you uncover what really transpired?

    If you would like to explore beyond this mystery, you can find more of my work in The Library of Ashes.

    ✦ Poetic Commissions by Rowan Evans ✦

    Every word I write is a devotion, a fragment of shadow and light carefully shaped into verse. On my Ko-fi, I offer custom poems, personalized rituals in language, and lyrical messages crafted just for you—or someone you wish to honor, surprise, or remember.

    Whether you seek:

    A poem for a loved one, friend, or muse

    A ritualized or thematic verse for special occasions

    A written reflection to say everything you struggle to

    …each commission is approached with care, reverence, and the intensity of my signature Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.

    ✨ Special Offer: Use code NGCR25 at checkout to receive 25% off any commission until the end of the month. Let these words become your keepsake, your offering, your moment of devotion.

    Commission a Poem on Ko-fi →