Author’s Note

Some people leave your life in a single, dramatic moment. Others fade through a series of small decisions, subtle disappointments, and lessons you never asked to learn. And sometimes, long after you’ve moved forward, a familiar name still wanders through your thoughts—not because you want them back, but because they once occupied a place in your everyday life.

This piece sits in that strange space between moving on and remembering. It doesn’t reach backward with longing or anger. It simply acknowledges that even when someone no longer belongs in your life, the mind may occasionally forget to stop looking for them.

— Rowan Evans

You Still Pop Into My Brain
Poetry by Rowan Evans

You look at me now,
and see—
someone better than
who I used to be—
but that’s all
thanks to you—
if I hadn’t learned the lessons,
if you hadn’t switched up
and made me see—
you were never the one for me.

It didn’t come all at once,
it came in steps for me,
you began to pull away, gradually—
it was little things at first,
you’d do things you thought would hurt—
introduced me to him,
just so you could flirt—
thinking I’d see it,
and feel like dirt—
but it didn’t work.

Because for me,
it was whatever—
we weren’t officially together.
We never talked, exclusive—
so who would I be
to be mad to begin with?

No, I wasn’t mad—
I was more like your parents,
just disappointed
in who you had become.

You used to be someone
in my life—
I used to reach for my phone
every time something happened—
wanting to tell you,
and sometimes I still do.
It’s a strange feeling
because it’s been so long—
and it feels so wrong,
that you sometimes—

still pop into my brain.

But it’s not the same—
it’s not how it used to be.

Journey into the Hexverse

[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.

[Circle of Me]
A reflective poem about sitting among the voices of memory, joy, pain, and fear—and realizing that some burdens are bigger than any one person.

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