Poetry by Rowan Evans

Author’s Note

This poem is a birthday rite, not a reckoning.

I’ve always treated birthdays less like milestones and more like ceremonial thresholds—moments to shed a skin, laugh at the ghosts behind me, and step forward with intention. Funeral for a Thirty-Six-Year-Old isn’t about mourning age; it’s about staging its death so something sharper, freer, and more self-aware can take its place.

Thirty-six feels less like getting older and more like arriving. I’m no longer interested in quiet gratitude or graceful humility—I wanted pageantry, drama, and a little irreverence. This piece is me honoring survival with style, embracing the absurdity of time, and celebrating the fact that I’m still here, still dangerous, still writing.

If this is a funeral, it’s one where the guest of honor very much refuses to stay dead.

Funeral for a Thirty-Six-Year-Old
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I rise from my velvet coffin,
for birthdays are sacred rituals of vanity,
thirty-six too perfect for a quiet exit.

Cobwebs kiss my ankles
as I stride the mausoleum of my life,
counting skeletons I’ve danced with
and candles I’ve lit in the name of style.

The moon winks at me through shattered panes,
celestial bodies admire
a drama queen in full bloom—
not wilted, not weary, theatrically immortal.

I sip absinthe from a skull-shaped chalice,
grinning at the reaper waiting impatiently,
his scythe tapping to the rhythm of my heartbeat—
shrug. He’s never been my type.

Mirrors whisper secrets of my youthful decay,
I laugh—lines are suggestions,
wrinkles invitations to flair,
every grey hair a medal for surviving
without losing my mind… entirely.

Birthday cake, molten lava,
frosted with sarcasm, glittering regrets.
I devour it with a ceremonial fork,
toasting myself—
who else deserves this gothic pageantry?

The clock ticks, and I bow to time,
not in surrender, but in acknowledgment:
I am older, wiser, and infinitely more unhinged.
let the world tremble at my theatricality—
I have arrived.

Candles gutter. Shadows shiver.
In the mirror’s reflection, I wink—
thirty-six has never looked this dangerous,
this decadent, this deliciously insane.

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