Poetry by Rowan Evans

✦ 🌹 Intro 🌹 ✦

Heartbreak doesn’t always roar—it often arrives softly, like dusk turning to night.
This piece is my attempt to sanctify that quiet ache: the plea not to be left half-loved, half-alive.
It’s a prayer whispered through bruised ribs and ink-stained fingers; an invocation, a psalm, and a benediction for those who still dare to love—even when love does not return.

✦ Invocation ✦

Read this not as plea,
but as offering.
A candle lit in trembling hands,
not to guide you home—
but to keep my own shadows gentle.

This is not a demand.
It is a prayer whispered by ribs still aching,
a softness that refuses to harden,
even when hope burns to ash.

✦ Psalm of the Half-Loved ✦
(A Prayer for the Mercy of Goodbye)

If you must go,
let it be as a mercy—
not as a slow unraveling.

Tell me cleanly,
so I can kneel beside the ruin
and name it what it is.

I won’t beg you to stay.
I won’t twist my love into chains.
But gods—don’t leave me
half-loved, half-alive.

Don’t leave your shadow behind
to haunt my trembling ribs,
or your silence to bloom
like poison in my marrow.

If goodbye must come,
let it come fully—
let it burn, let it break,
so I can gather the ash
and call it sacred.

I have carried love
like an unrepentant prayer,
even when it bruised me.
I have knelt before absence,
offering devotion to a ghost.

But spare me the waiting—
the quiet terror of not knowing
if your heart still turns toward mine
in the dark.

If you must go,
leave nothing for hope to cling to.
Let my ache be honest,
my grief unchained.

And let me remember this:
loving you was never my ruin.
It was my small rebellion
against the cold.

✦ Benediction ✦

Go softly, even if you must go.
Leave me not with maybes,
but with mercy.

May my love remain unrepentant,
even as it mourns what could not stay.

And if heartbreak must come,
let it come honest—
so my ruin may become reverence,
my ache, a quiet vow:

To keep loving,
even when love does not return.
To keep my softness alive,
even when the world would rather see it buried.

Amen.

🖋 Author’s Note:

I wrote this piece as both confession and protection spell. It’s easier, sometimes, to live with grief than with the endless ache of “maybe.”
For anyone who’s been left half-loved: may your goodbye come clean, and may your softness outlive the pain.
Even heartbreak, when spoken honestly, can become a quiet kind of grace.

With ink & flame,
— Rowan Evans

🔗 You Might Also Enjoy 🔗

My Only Muse – Then & Now
Litany & Tongue – A Devotional Duet
Epistle to the Name They Buried
A Letter Never Sent – Prayer of the Heartbroken Heretic
Psalm of the Spiraling Tongue – A Prayer Against Goodbye