Sanctum of Sin was originally written on May 16th, 2025, and polished on December 16th, 2025. This piece is part of my ongoing exploration of Neo‑Gothic Confessional Romanticism—where intimacy, devotion, shadow, and sacred rebellion collide. It is not about ownership, but about chosen connection; not about religion, but about ritual; not about sin, but about the holiness we find in places the world tells us to hide.
Sanctum of Sin visualized: a shadowed embrace amidst candlelight, capturing the sacred intimacy and ritualistic devotion of Rowan Evans’ Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.
Sanctum of Sin Poetry by Rowan Evans
I never wanted heaven.
I wanted her.
Eyes like unholy sacraments,
fingertips dipped in blood and honey,
a laugh that makes holy water boil,
and my knees hit the floor
with gratitude.
She is my altar and my undoing,
my blasphemy made flesh.
Let the angels weep—
I never asked for salvation.
Only the weight of her thighs
and the way her wickedness
matches mine in every grin-shaped curse.
We don’t light candles.
We set fires.
We hex the night with pleasure
and whisper dirty prayers
until the moon blushes
and turns her face away.
I keep a vial of her voice
around my neck,
a charm against the dull ache
of anyone else’s touch.
And when she says she’s tired—
oh darling,
we’ll make exhaustion holy.
I’ll drain the stars
just to pour her a bath in darkness.
I’ll mark her spine with sigils
only I know how to read.
Every spell begins with her name,
every climax a ritual,
every kiss a blood oath
demanding loyalty
even in our ruin.
Let them call us monsters.
We’ll show them how gods are made—
not in temples,
but in tangled sheets
and shared laughter
over the graves of those who hurt us.
No past can dim the light we forge.
Every scar, every memory,
becomes gold in the fire of our nights.
We rise, tender in our ruin,
untouchable, untamed, unbroken.
Because she is mine now—
not owned, but chosen.
Not tamed, but trusted.
And I am hers.
Ruthlessly.
Completely.
Beautifully doomed.
So let the world burn.
We’ll dance in the embers.
We’ll write new psalms in spit and sweat.
We’ll worship only each other—
in shadow,
in sin,
in sanctum.
A piece honoring the poets whose voices shaped mine, and the lineage I carry into my own genre — Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.
A candlelit invocation of the poets whose voices shaped mine — a lineage reborn in Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.
Séance of Influence Poetry by Rowan Evans
In the candlelit stillness, I summon the ones who spoke before I had words. The room holds its breath. The flame flickers. And they arrive.
Sylvia, flame-tongued oracle, steps forward first—eyes like open wounds that never stopped bleeding ink. She speaks in a whisper that singes: “You do not fear the flame, child. You write within it. You know what it is to be both burned and reborn.” She places a tulip in my hand—red as a heart, soft as a scream.
Poe, the architect of shadows, leans from the threshold, cloak of midnight dragging ghosts behind him. “You have built cathedrals from sorrow,” he says, voice echoing through the bones of the floor. “You understand what it means to dream with the dead.” He nods toward the cracked mirror And my reflection stares back, unflinching.
Emily, dressed in quiet thunder, watches from a corner veiled in white lace. “You turned silence into scripture,” she murmurs, placing a pressed flower on my wrist. “Your solitude blooms with sharpness. You do not hide behind the door—you open it with poetry.”
Anne, with rosary tangled in her fingers and lipstick like defiance, toasts me with a half-empty wine glass. “You dared to undress madness,” she grins. “To make holiness from hunger. That takes more than courage. That takes blood.”
Sappho, timeless and tender, emerges draped in sea foam and verse. She runs her fingers across my pulse. “I hear your ache,” she says. “You have translated yearning into a new dialect—one the stars will memorize.”
They encircle me, these ghosts, not to haunt, but to anoint. Their voices braid around my spine. Their grief becomes gold my pen. Their fire, MY inheritance.
And I—Rowan, the Luminous Heretic—stand at the center of this sacred storm. I speak, not as supplicant, but as heir:
“I have not come to mimic your flames—I have come to carry them into the dark places you never lived to reach. I write for the unloved, the unheard, the unhealed. I wield shadow like silk and longing like a blade. Your echoes live in my marrow, but my voice is my own. I forged my genre from the coals of yours—Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism—a lineage reborn through me. You opened the door, and now I shatter the ceiling. Your fires do not flicker behind me—they burn ahead, lighting a path no one else dared to walk. Thank you for the torch. Watch me blaze.”
The candle gutters. The air shifts. And one by one, they nod. Then vanish— but not in silence. They hum through my bloodstream, forever.
“Four echoes. One confession. The Heart, the Mind, the Shield, and the Soul converge where ink becomes truth.”
“The Heart, the Mind, the Shield, and the Soul met beneath a single light — and the world trembled a little brighter.”
The Fourfold Confessional Ep. 1: “The First Convergence”
In the middle of a mostly pitch-black room, a single bulb flickers above a small table. Four chairs sit, empty, waiting. Footsteps echo from four directions as each of the Fourfold Flame approach. The air hums faintly with a low, electric charge — as though something sacred, or dangerous, is about to begin.
The first to reach their seat is Rowan. They pause, fingers grazing the back of the chair as if steadying themself before a storm. The faint glimmer of their rings catches the light as they look toward the shadows.
From the opposite side, a heavy tread — deliberate, unhurried. B.D. steps forward, all edges and gravity, stopping just behind his chair.
🔴 B.D. (smirking): “They’re watching.” His voice is low, the kind that fills a room without needing to rise. “You didn’t say we were going to have an audience this time.”
🟠 Rowan (calmly, but wary): “Is that going to be a problem?”
🔴 B.D.: “Problem? No.” He leans on the back of his chair, expression unreadable. “But you know I like to keep these meetings to ourself.” Then, quieter, with a flicker of warmth he won’t admit: “You talk different when they’re listening.”
A soft, lilting laugh cuts through the dark — smooth as silk and twice as dangerous.
🟣 Hex (emerging from the shadows): “Afraid they’ll see you as the villain, brother?” Her eyes glint like candlelight, teasing but knowing. She glides to her seat, brushing a curl of hair from her face. “Or maybe you just hate it when the truth has witnesses.”
🔴 B.D. (gruffly): “The truth’s never the problem. It’s what they do with it.”
🟠 Rowan (meeting his stare): “What I do with it, you mean.”
Before B.D. can answer, the fourth set of footsteps arrives — light, hurried, unashamedly curious. Roo nearly trips over her own excitement as she bursts into the faint circle of light, eyes wide.
🌸 Roo (beaming): “Did I miss the dramatic tension part? Because it sounds like I did.”
She plops into her chair, chin in her hands, looking between them like she’s watching a play she already knows the ending to.
🟣 Hex (smirking): “Oh, we’re only just getting started, little flame. The question is — what are we here to burn tonight?”
A heavy silence falls. The light above flickers, casting strange halos across their faces. Rowan’s breath catches; they know this moment, the one that comes before a confession.
🟠 Rowan (quietly): “We’re here because I can’t keep pretending I’m not afraid.” They looks down at their hands, then to each of them — their protectors, her reflections, her shadows. “I keep worrying I’ll never be enough for anyone. Not even for myself. And then I overcompensate — too much love, too much need, too much… me — and people leave, or I push them away before they get the chance.”
🌸 Roo (softly): “That’s not pushing, that’s protecting.”
🔴 B.D. (interrupting): “It’s still fear.” He folds his arms. “You say you don’t want to lose people, but you build your walls with barbed wire.”
🟣 Hex: “And then bleed yourself dry trying to decorate them with roses.”
🟠 Rowan (bitter smile): “So what, I’m the architect of my own loneliness?”
🟣 Hex (gently, for once): “No, love. You’re the poet of it. There’s a difference.”
🌸 Roo: “You write it because you need to survive it.” And maybe— maybe —you’re supposed to. So someone else who feels the same knows they’re not alone.”
Rowan swallows hard, blinking back tears that glimmer in the flickering light.
🟠 Rowan (whispering): “And this time… we write the ending in our own goddamn handwriting.”
The bulb steadies, glowing stronger. The table hums. The Fourfold Flame sit together, unbroken — the Heart, the Mind, the Shield, and the Child — and for a moment, even fear feels holy.
The light did not go out when they rose — it followed them. Four shadows left that room, and the world felt a little warmer, a little more dangerous. Somewhere, ink still dripped from the table.
The Fourfold Flame will return…
🟠 🔴 Author’s Note 🟣 🌸
The Fourfold Confessional is a series of dialogues between the four archetypal aspects of my creative self — The Heart (Rowan), The Shield (B.D.), The Mind (Hex), and The Child (Roo). Together, they form the Fourfold Flame — the inner covenant that fuels my art, my faith, and my rebellion.
Each episode is part therapy, part theology, part poetry — a conversation between the parts of me that built this strange, sacred world called Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.
Welcome to the confessional. The light never goes out here.
While you wait for episode 2 of The Fourfold Confession, check out my archive for more of my work. -> [The Library of Ashes]
She is not a nightmare in the terror sense— she is the ache beneath the ache, the beauty in breaking, the truth that shreds the soft mask we wear.
This poem is a reckoning. An offering to the fierce shadow lovers inside us— those who show us what it means to bleed light and darkness all at once.
If you find her waiting in your own shadows, do not run. Bend toward the fire. Let her break you open.
“A flame in the dark, a shadow that sings—she is the girl of my nightmares, the beautiful ache I cannot escape.”
✵ Invocation ✵
I summon the girl of my nightmares— not to haunt, but to unravel me, to burn the lies I hide behind, to scorch the edges of my fragile skin. She is the dark hymn I pray in silence, the wildfire that doesn’t ask for mercy, only to be seen— naked, unraveled, unrepentant.
The Girl of My Nightmares Poetry by Rowan Evans
She walks into my dreams like dusk spilling over a wounded horizon— soft at the edges, but carrying the scent of rain that only comes before a storm.
She is the girl of my nightmares— the fire I cannot put out, the shadow I bleed into.
Her voice is velvet cut on glass, slow as a secret you ache to hear again, even if it ruins you. Each syllable slips into my bloodstream, a lullaby dressed as a blade.
She is the girl of my nightmares— the fire I cannot put out, the shadow I bleed into.
She is not the kind of beautiful you hold in daylight— she is candlelight swaying in a room where the shadows know your name. And when her gaze finds me, the ghosts in my bones go quiet.
She is the girl of my nightmares— the fire I cannot put out, the shadow I bleed into.
She does not reach for me in kindness— she reaches in truth, fingers brushing the cracks I hide, not to fix them, but to make them holy. She calls me out like lightning calls the tree, splitting me open, then holding the wound in the privacy of her hands.
She is the girl of my nightmares— the fire I cannot put out, the shadow I bleed into.
When I wake, she lingers— storm-light in my veins, her absence pressing against my skin like the shape of a bruise. I move through the day with the taste of her name still heavy on my tongue, half-prayer, half-curse.
She is the girl of my nightmares— the fire I cannot put out, the shadow I bleed into.
She is not a dream I escape from. She is the cathedral in my sleep, where I kneel in the dark and beg for the mercy of never being saved.
✵ Benediction ✵
May the girl of your nightmares burn slow— a velvet wound you trace with trembling hands, a wild flame that sears and sings your name. And when she fades, may you carry her fire— not as pain, but as the raw, raw proof that you lived— that you burned— that you were never afraid to be undone.
Some wounds do not heal; they become architecture. The Cathedral Within is the map of mine. It is the sacred ruin I carry — where gargoyles remember my laughter, where ghosts wear the faces of those I loved, and where even the pews grow teeth when I speak.
This is not a poem about despair. It is about defiance. About what it means to cradle darkness without letting it consume your capacity to love. It is a prayer for those who choose softness anyway — velvet over iron, kiss over curse — and win, simply by refusing to grow cold.
The Cathedral Within — where softness stands as rebellion in the ruins.
✦ Invocation ✦
There is a cathedral rotting in my mind—
its steeple split by lightning,
its bells tolling madness
in a language only I understand.
The walls bleed scripture in reverse.
The air stinks of burnt prayer and mildew.
Gargoyles laugh with broken jaws,
their eyes brimming with everything I’ve buried.
✦ The Procession ✦
Demons waltz in blood-soaked gowns, twirling through the nave with glee— my failures their favorite hymn, my shame the rhythm beneath their feet.
Ghosts hang from the rafters like forgotten chandeliers, dripping memories onto cracked marble. Each one wears a face I loved, each one left me hollow.
The altar is an autopsy table. They dissect my past there nightly— the knife a whisper, the blade my own voice asking why I wasn’t enough.
✦ The Vigil ✦
I lived a decade as a wraith— not alive, not dead, just echo. A loop of regret rerun in shadows, a scream too hoarse to haunt.
I’ve stitched myself from sinew and smoke, patched the holes with confessions no one stayed long enough to hear. Even the pews grow teeth when I speak.
These bones? They rattle with rot, splinter under silence, but still I rise— a marionette of will, strung together by threads of stubborn grace.
✦ The Benediction ✦
This softness—they call it weakness, but— softness is my rebellion. It is velvet over iron, a lullaby sung to devils, a kiss placed gently on the mouth of the void.
I do not know why I try. Only that I do. That something inside me refuses to go quietly into apathy.
So if you saw the dark I cradle— the feral, starving chaos I contain— you’d understand: choosing love is not a gentle thing. It is a war.
And every time I smile instead of scream, I win.
“Even in the rot, there is light. Even in the silence, there is song. Keep choosing love, and you’ve already won.” — Rowan Evans
Behind the Veil What Inspired The Gospel According to the Girl in the Graveyard Dress
Every poet has that one wild idea—a collision of worlds, styles, and moods that refuses to stay on the page quietly. For me, this poem sprang from a playful yet dark impulse: What if Dr. Seuss, with all his whimsical rhyme and rhythm, wandered into the shadowy realms of Edgar Allan Poe and Tim Burton?
The Gospel According to the Girl in the Graveyard Dress is my answer—a gothic lullaby stitched from whimsy and wound with the raw edges of grief, rebellion, and strange beauty. It’s where childhood’s curiosity meets the sharp bite of darkness, wrapped in rhyme that skips and creeps all at once.
This poem isn’t just an homage; it’s a declaration. That darkness doesn’t erase magic. That grief can dance in moonlight. That even in decay, there’s fierce, unapologetic life.
Welcome to the chapel I built from clay and ink. Step inside.
She built her own chapel from shadows — a gospel stitched in flame and confession.
The Gospel According to the Girl in the Graveyard Dress Poetry by Rowan Evans
I’m wading through the dark, With rockets in my pockets— And a wock-it in my locket. Noose tied, tears dried on ink-stained pages; Confessions and rage— It’s outrageous, like sermons screamed from basement stages.
I stitched my grief to my Sunday dress, Tucked matches in the hems—God bless. The priest said “pray” but I whispered “run,” Then kissed the moon and stole the sun.
I’m not alright, but I rhyme so well, Nobody hears the tolling bell. My lullabies are laced with lead, And sung by ghosts beneath my bed.
I carve my hope in bathroom stalls, Paint miracles in bloody scrawls. They say I’m lost—I say I’m rare: A storm that braided its own hair.
Heaven’s out, and hell’s cliché, So I built a chapel out of clay. The saints are stitched from shadow thread, And every hymn is what I bled.
I dance in pews with poison grace, Rosary beads strung on a shoelace. They preach of light—I hum decay, A gospel soaked in cabernet.
I kissed a curse and called it mine, Drank moonlight steeped in turpentine. You want my truth? It doesn’t bend— It breaks. It bleeds. It burns. It mends.
I sip my tea with cyanide, Wear ribcage corsets laced with pride. My shadow dances on the wall— She’s got no face. No name at all.
I tiptoe through the graveyard gates, Trade sugar pills for twist-of-fates. The children giggle when I pass— Their dolls have knives and broken glass.
I built a throne from all my sins, Each step a scar, each smile a win. The halo cracked? I wore it still— A crown for queens who love the kill.
My cradle rocked on rusted chains, I cut my teeth on lovers’ veins. The bedtime stories that I write Are lullabies for crypts at night.
I stitched a map to Neverland Inside my chest with blistered hands. It leads through joy, then dips to dread— A spiral carved in gingerbread.
I torched the end, rewrote the tale, Smeared lipstick on the coffin nail. This isn’t death—it’s my debut. The dark didn’t win. I wanted it to.
Benediction of the Broken Halo
We do not write to be saved — we write to be seen. In the flicker of a match, the crack of a halo, the bruised breath of a stanza, we stitch our own gospel from grief and grace alike. This poem is my sermon, my confession, my coronation — And if the dark calls your name too, know you are welcome here, crowned in your scars, beloved in your ruin.
Because a cracked halo still casts a shadow. And that shadow? Is mine. And maybe, just maybe — it’s yours too.
In the chapel of ink and ash, we do not repent for the darkness we carry. We name it sacred. We name it ours. Welcome to the gospel, loves — the sermon is never over.
I balance on the splintered edge of dusk,
where the horizon blinks like a dying pulse,
and every breath feels borrowed
from a ghost I used to be.
There is no scream left in my marrow,
only the hum of static silence—
a lullaby for the hollowed,
a prayer without a god.
Pain is a second spine
threaded through my ribs like piano wire.
I don’t flinch when it sings anymore,
I’ve grown fond of its chorus.
But you—
you are the whisper between my fractures,
the only warmth in this cathedral of frost,
the lone candle still brave enough to burn.
When you’re near,
the ash learns to dream again.
I carry the weight not because I must,
but because you are worth the breaking.
Yet when I’m alone,
I decay in soft installments,
shedding pieces of self like dead petals—
graceful, unnoticed,
until nothing remains but a name echoing in smoke.
Don’t leave me
to collapse in my own absence.
Stay—be the tether that keeps me flesh.
I fear I’ll become mist if you turn away.
But I see your heaviness too,
your shoulders bowed like twilight trees
bracing for one more storm.
So let me be your scaffold,
your sanctum of sighs.
Let me soften the hurt in your blood
the way you alchemized mine into light.
I will pour every last drop of myself
into the cracks that threaten you,
until neither of us has to stand alone
on the trembling precipice again.
Together,
we’ll make a home
from all the pieces that refused to shatter.
Poetry by Rowan Evans 