Author’s Note

I’ve always used humor as a way of carrying things that would otherwise feel impossible to carry.

One Ton of Feathers is about that contradiction—the strange place where pain and comedy can exist in the same body at the same time.

Sometimes I can be hurting deeply and still make a joke. That doesn’t mean the pain isn’t real. It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring. And it definitely doesn’t mean the weight has disappeared.

It just means I’ve learned that sometimes a joke can change the way something heavy feels in your hands.

That’s where the final metaphor came from.

One ton of steel weighs one ton.

One ton of feathers also weighs one ton.

The feathers aren’t lighter.

They’re simply softer.

That’s what I want humor to do. Not erase pain. Not minimize it. Not pretend everything is okay when it isn’t.

Just take something brutally heavy and make it a little easier to hold.

That’s what poetry does for me, too.

I don’t bury what hurts.

I turn it into ink.

— Rowan Evans

One Ton of Feathers
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I’ve got a brain that tells me—
I’m not enough,
but at the same time—
says I’m too much.

That’s a contradiction,
but my brains too fucked to listen.

I’m here, no clocks—
like time is missing.
It’s like my mind is on ice,
my thoughts are slipping—
has it been days, weeks
or months—I don’t know,
I’ve lost the ability
to give a fuck.

There’s a smile on my face
and a hole in my chest,
to the outside world
that makes no sense.
I’m in pain but I joke anyway—
shits heavy for me,
but I can carry it.

I turn it into ink—
I don’t bury it.

Poetry is alchemy for me,
I use ink to translate the truth of me—
and truthfully,
I use jokes to soften the blow,
not for me but for us,
universally—

the jokes take one ton of steel,
and make it feel
like one ton of feathers—
not lighter, still heavy as ever,
but softer now.

Journey into the Hexverse

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