Poetry by Rowan Evans

Author’s Note

Băobèi was written last year during a season of longing—when affection felt vast, distant, and almost mythic. It lived quietly in my drafts, waiting for a moment when it could breathe on its own.

This poem is devotion rendered as geography: islands, blossoms, moonlight, and stars becoming a language for love. It is about carrying someone in every word, every breath, every imagined horizon. About how a name can become a compass.

Some poems are born loud.
This one waited.

Băobèi
Poetry by Rowan Evans

Băobèi—
your beauty rivals that of the Sakura,
petals like whispered secrets
drifting through my ink-stained veins.
And I got your name,
tatted on the tip of my tongue,
your essence lives in every word that I say,
haunting the shadows of my pen,
echoing in the silence between heartbeats.

Now I’m hopping islands, in search of
your divineness. Your royalty,
I bow to you, your highness.
I crowned you the queen
of my twilight kingdom.
Your loyal subjects,
all shadows of my thoughts.

Cherry blossoms fade,
but your radiance lingers,
Orchid petals from Mindoro
drip like honeyed secrets,
Lotus from distant ponds
mirrors your serene grace,
Frangipani drifts across the wind,
carrying your laughter.
Sampaguita blooms in hidden corners,
its tiny white stars like your quiet strength,
Ylang-ylang whispers perfume into the night,
each scent a pulse of your heartbeat
I am drawn to like the tide.

I trace the heavens in your honor—
a moon suspended over Manila Bay,
its reflection trembling across dark water,
mirroring the tremor in my chest
each time your name passes my lips.
The Milky Way drapes over islands and mountains,
a silken veil for your light to wander beneath,
and I follow, tracing your essence
through ink, shadow, and the spaces between heartbeats,
until the world itself becomes
a garden of your light.

You are the rose in my ruin,
the bloom I cradle in the ashes of my nights,
the ink I spill across silent pages,
and I am forever your humble witness,
your loyal poet in a kingdom
built from devotion, dusk, and flame.

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