Author’s Note

I’ve written about dreams for years.

Not because I think they predict the future. Not because I think they’re magical.

Because they feel real.

Real enough that sometimes waking up feels stranger than the dream itself.

I don’t think people talk enough about that moment between sleeping and waking—the brief period where both realities still exist at the same time.

The dream is fading.

The room is returning.

And for a few seconds, you’re caught between them.

That’s where this poem lives.

I’ve had dreams that felt so vivid, so emotionally complete, that waking up felt like losing something. Not a person. Not a place. A version of myself.

A self that existed somewhere else.

The older I get, the more fascinated I become by that feeling.

Why do some dreams linger for hours while entire days disappear from memory?

Why do imaginary places sometimes feel more familiar than real ones?

Why does waking occasionally feel like arriving somewhere instead of returning?

This piece doesn’t try to answer those questions.

It simply sits with them.

Because there are mornings when the first thing I feel isn’t relief that the dream is over.

It’s grief that it ended.

And I suspect I’m not the only one.

— Rowan Evans

Before My Feet Touch the Floor
Poetry by Rowan Evans

Dreams—
a common topic
in my poetry.

It’s because
they don’t feel fake to me.
They feel like memories.

Do know what it’s like
to wake up confused—
because you’re in your own room?

How do you live—
when your dreams are more alive
than your waking life?

It’s as if the person I was
a moment ago
is still out there,
waiting for me
to return.

So I lie there,
trying to remember
which version of me
is the imposter—
the one who wakes,
or the one who wanders.

Sometimes I think
the dream‑me
is the one who remembers,
and I’m the one
who forgets.

Because if I feel more alive
in the places I can’t stay,
what does that make
the life I return to?

There’s a mourning
no one talks about—
the kind that happens
before your feet
touch the floor.

Journey into the Hexverse…

[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.

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