Author’s Note

Sending What I Can’t Say
There are things I can write much more easily than I can say.

That’s probably one of the strangest contradictions of being a poet: I can put some of my deepest thoughts onto a page and hand them to strangers, yet saying those same words directly to one person can feel almost impossible.

Message in a Bottle lives inside that contradiction.

The poem is about affection, vulnerability, fear, and the strange freedom that comes from finally letting thoughts escape after keeping them locked away for too long. The words may come easily onto the page, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re easy to carry once they’re written.

And sometimes I wonder what happens to all those words after I release them.

Do they reach the person they’re meant for?

Do they wash ashore somewhere?

Or do they simply drift through the world, another confession swallowed by the waves?

Maybe that’s part of why I keep writing.

Even when I can’t say something aloud, I can still send it.

So I put the message in the bottle, seal it with ink, and let the tide decide where it goes.

— Rowan Evans

Message in a Bottle
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I want to talk about what I feel,
but sometimes I get scared
and that just seems silly—
because I spend the majority of my time
writing lines about what I feel,
coded in rhymes and metaphors, for real.
I fall in love like once a second—
but it’s hardly what you think,
it’s just the way my mind shows affection—
it’s like every time I blink,
I see her face and fall again.

I’ve taken risks, I’ve let things slip from my lips—
things that before I would have kept locked inside,
packed in a box in the back of my mind.
Even when I try and stop it—
just can’t stop it, at all,
body is fine—heart in a free fall.
No parachute, ground approaches fast—
and I can’t help but laugh.
I’ve been weak, powerless since I met her—
but still, I’ve never been stronger either.

In years past, I’ve kept my secrets
with lips locked—padlocks and lost keys.
But with her, these words come easily—
too easy, it was for me to say these things.
It’s like I regurgitate every thought I had—
but every thought I had spoiled,
rotten and gone bad—

I held them in too long.

They’ve become twisted,
corrupted and all wrong—
or that’s how it feels
when the lantern burns out—
when I’m too far from the shore
to see the lighthouse now.

So I sit in a rowboat,
rocking in the waves—
praying for a chance to say
everything I want to say.
It’s stuck at the tip of my tongue—
and the thought she’ll never hear
takes the air from my lungs—

but still, can’t seem to produce a sound—
so I’ll continue to write it down,
in hopes that one day she’ll get a chance to see—
and that every poem isn’t just another
message in a bottle, lost at sea—

Journey into the Hexverse

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