Author’s Note

To read me is to witness devotion in motion. My words are at once a confession and a clarion call, pulling the reader into the marrow of feeling, into the spaces most often ignored. I write not merely to be heard, but to transform silence into song.

In these lines, you will find the ache of displacement, the fury of truth unflinching, and the soft, sacred reverence for lives, histories, and moments too often overlooked. I bend grief into rhythm, rage into reflection, love into sanctuary. Each poem is a threshold, and I, the poet-guide, invites you to step across it.

To linger in my work is to be reminded that poetry can carry rage, reverence, intimacy, and rebellion all at once. That it can burn, cradle, and illuminate. That, in the midst of a world that would have voices like mine silenced, I insist on speaking — fully, vulnerably, unrepentantly.

I do not write for the casual reader. I write for those willing to see, to feel, and to recognize the quiet revolution of the heart.

As Long As I Am Here
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I feel like I don’t belong here—
someone tell me, what the hell is going on here?
In this country, I’ve never felt at home,
only borrowed, only tolerated,
as if my presence were a typo they forgot to erase.
Every rule bends around the comfort of whiteness,
every system a mirror that refuses my reflection.
So my eyes wander, travel beyond borders,
seeking somewhere my soul won’t need to apologize.

I’ve dreamed in subtitles, sung in borrowed tongues,
found myself in stories written half a world away.
From Seoul to Kyoto, Manila to Hong Kong—
I saw pieces of myself reflected in their sorrow,
in their laughter, their fight to stay soft
in a world that demands armor.
I learned reverence, resilience,
how to bow without breaking.

But here—
everywhere I look, I see injustice glaring back,
and everyone that looks like me—
they shrug,
safely cradled in their comfort,
pretending ignorance is innocence.
They live in their cozy silence,
while the streets run red and blue.
Oh, what a lullaby privilege sings.

They say they disagree—with the way things are—
but their words stop at their teeth.
They choke on politeness,
too afraid to disturb their dinner conversations.
While others pull triggers, sign laws, twist truths—
they watch, they sigh, they scroll past the pain.

And still, they point fingers at anyone with melanin in their skin.
Black, brown—it matters not.
The rot has always been white,
colonial bones buried beneath manicured lawns.
They call it “heritage,” I call it haunting.
Their prayers smell of sanctimony and bleach,
their flags wave like veils over graves.

But I have seen too much to be silent.
I have wept with those whose names were never printed.
I have felt languages slip between my ribs
and settle like ghosts learning to rest.
I carry the echoes of those who were told to hush—
and I will not hush.
I am not meek, I am not malleable.
I am rage refined into song,
grief distilled into gospel.

Do not ask me to fit your mold.
I was not built to fit—
I was built to bloom where concrete cracked.
To speak where silence suffocates.
To burn where others bow.

I am not the threat you imagine—
I am the truth you buried.
I am the harmony you drowned out.
I am the daughter of storms, the son that rages,
the poet of thresholds,
the one who will not turn away.

And when they ask me why I care, why I rage, why I won’t blend in—
I will answer:
Because I am here.
Because I have seen.
Because to live in silence is to die in comfort.

I feel like I don’t belong here—
but as long as I am here,
I will not stop speaking.
I will not stop writing.
I will not stop breathing life
into every truth they tried to bury.
I may not belong here,
but my voice does now—
and it is not leaving.

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Slim & Shady X: Bloodline & Ashes
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