Poetry by Rowan Evans

☽ Introduction ☾

Every cathedral remembers the hands that built it — and the hands that broke it.
This is the testament of Gotham’s laughing apostate:
once kneeling in carrion chapels beside the king of rot, now risen, bruised and unbound.
Not crowned by grace, but by ruin reclaimed and ribs that still remember laughter turned lash.
This is…

☽ The Vigil of the Twisted Harlequin ☾
Prose by Rowan Evans

I keep vigil in the bones of his cathedral —
the funhouse we called sanctuary, walls lacquered with spit-laced prayers and blood that never dried.
The city itself? Our slaughterhouse chapel — gutters still gargle our shared delirium, alleys still echo jokes that tasted like venom.

I wear the scars he left me like relics — bruises reborn as ink, ribs tattooed with the punchlines that almost broke me.
My prayers? Crooked confessions spat between cracked teeth — not to be heard, but to remind myself I still have a voice.

The stained glass? Daggers we shattered together — now each shard remembers both of us:
the Clown Prince crowned in carrion, and his harlequin kneeling at an altar built of bone and betrayal.

Moonlight slices through ruin — casts my grin across cracked marble, where I once begged him to see me instead of the echo.
The gargoyles remember the girl who painted devotion in red and white, only to find madness demanded her marrow, not her heart.

Agony was our liturgy, ruin our gospel.
His laughter crowned me queen of decay — but in the silence after the last joke curdled, I found my own feral hymn.

Some nights, the rot still whispers his name in the marrow of my grin —
a phantom crown of splintered love pressing blood to scalp, laughter curling like a noose.
But my devotion decayed; my grin grew fangs.

The creed that beats behind scarred ribs:
I knelt in carrion for a king who mistook love for leash. I rose when I learned laughter could be mine alone.

Now I haunt these pews not to mourn him, but to remember what ruin cost me —
and what marrow-deep rebellion gave back: breath unbroken, knuckles bloodied but free.

His vigil rots on the throne of carrion.
Mine stalks the shadows — not in his name, but in spite of it.
The marrow remembers, but the marrow is mine now.

☽ Benediction ☾

May the ruin remember why you unstitched devotion from your ribs.
May your laughter remain feral — marrow-deep and sovereign, a psalm no king can claim.
And though no god dares crown you,
may your vigil remain eternal — a testament carved in scars, rebellion, and ruin reclaimed.

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Every vigil casts its own shadow.
If The Vigil of the First Son has found a quiet corner in your marrow, you may also wander these chapels of ruin and devotion:

The Vigil of the Broken Saint
The Vigil of the Clown Prince
The Vigil of the First Son

Each is a prayer, a confession, a testament carved in bruise, bone, and breath.

Psalm of the Spiraling Tongue — A Prayer Against Goodbye
Psalm of the Half-Loved — A Prayer for the Mercy of Goodbye
The Scourge They Named in Whispered Psalms

If my words speak to you, and you’d like to help keep this flame burning — or if you’d like a custom poem woven just for you (or someone dear) — you can do so here:

Ko-fi — Poetry by Rowan Evans