Author’s Note

There is a strange kind of intimacy in being known through words.

A reader can walk through your thoughts, recognize pieces of themselves in your metaphors, and feel close to the person behind the page. Sometimes that closeness becomes something deeper—feelings forming around a voice, a mind, a collection of carefully chosen pieces of a life.

But a page is still only a page.

Half a Picture steps into that uncomfortable space between being seen and being truly known. It isn’t dismissing the feelings that can grow through poetry; those feelings can be completely real. It is simply looking at what happens when someone falls for the person they’ve encountered through the words, while the rest of the picture remains outside the frame.

— Rowan Evans

Half a Picture
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I’m going to talk about something
I don’t talk about a lot—

it’s an interesting thing,
the way people cling—

messages received—

“I love you,”

excuse me, what?
That’s a strong way to start—
and I’m flattered, really.

But they don’t know me,
not really—
I know they think they do,
because they’ve read my words—
seen my mind
and walked through my thoughts—

that’s how they feel,
and to them it’s real—
who am I to say it’s not?

But they fell in love
with half a picture—

a blurred photo—

and a vague description of me.

Journey into the Hexverse

[All for Me]
When thunder becomes applause, lightning turns into paparazzi, and rain rolls out a flooded red carpet, one poet starts wondering whether nature’s celebration has gone a little too far.

[Lessons Without Kindness]
A reflection on learning self-respect from a relationship that changed—the lessons hidden in manipulation, silence, and loss, and the realization that you don’t have to shrink yourself to make someone else feel tall.

[The Metaphor Machine]
A poem that takes apart its own machinery as it runs—breaking lines, breaking thoughts, and following metaphors from moonlight to tides, oceans, shorelines, and city streets.

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