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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: darkness

  • Undead Symphony (Remix) — A Poem About Apathy, Empathy & Emotional Isolation

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some poems don’t need to be abandoned when we outgrow the person who originally wrote them.

    Sometimes they need to be revisited.

    Undead Symphony (Remix) returns to a poem I originally wrote on June 13, 2024. The original was written from a place I understood intimately: feeling perpetually misplaced, overlooked, and emotionally exhausted while still carrying an enormous capacity for empathy underneath the numbness.

    The title came from that contradiction.

    An undead thing is neither fully alive nor truly dead. A symphony, meanwhile, is full of movement, emotion, tension, and sound. Put those ideas together and you get something that feels very close to the emotional state I was trying to describe: a person who can feel deeply while simultaneously becoming distant from the world around them.

    That contradiction is still here in 2026.

    What changed is the way I approach it.

    The remix gives the poem more room to breathe. I broke apart lines that had previously been compressed together, allowing certain thoughts to linger rather than rushing past them. I also sharpened some of the imagery and cadence, particularly around the relationship between solitude, apathy, and empathy.

    The original poem said what I was feeling.

    The remix feels more like I understand why I was saying it.

    And that distinction matters.

    I have spent a lot of time in my writing exploring darkness—not because darkness is all I have, but because I have always been fascinated by the strange things that can survive inside it. Undead Symphony is one of those pieces.

    Apathy and empathy shouldn’t fit together.

    Yet somehow, they do.

    One protects the heart by making the world feel distant.

    The other keeps reaching toward it anyway.

    That tension is the symphony.

    The speaker may feel undead, but the music never actually stops.

    — Rowan Evans

    A solitary figure sits beneath a moonlit window as ghostly music and shadows surround a small warm light.
    Somewhere between apathy and empathy, something inside me keeps making music.

    Undead Symphony (Remix)
    Poetry by Rowan Evans
    [written on July 23, 2026]

    It was always the wrong place,
    wrong time—

    I was always second best,
    never first place—

    Never the one to win the race,
    I was always the one they laughed at,
    never with—

    always the one that
    when they were gone—

    never missed.

    So I grew cold and distant
    like far-off summer nights,
    yearned for on cold winter mornings.

    And sometimes—

    it still feels hard to breathe,
    like a shadow in the light,
    fading beneath.

    I never was one for faith,
    I never believed,
    no thoughts and no prayers—

    because why should anybody care?

    In a crowd I felt alone,
    a silent voice,
    an empty phone.

    It’s apathy—
    and I pair it with my empathy.
    An odd dance of light and dark,
    within me.

    It’s beauty in the darkness,
    an undead symphony.

    But still—I dream of a place,
    where I’m more than just a face.
    A spark in the night,
    a fleeting glimpse
    of warmth in the cold,
    and strength in the struggle.

    I remember moments—
    fleeting and rare,
    of laughter shared,
    of someone who cared.

    Brief as they were,
    they lit up my sky,

    A reminder that even shadows can try.

    Yet—
    I return to the solitude I know,
    where apathy is my only show.

    But my empathy,
    a hidden grace—

    whispers of a longing for a different place.

    It’s a contradiction,
    a twisted art—
    to feel so much,
    with a guarded heart.

    An undead symphony,
    a haunting tune—

    a dance of shadows beneath the moon.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Fallen Angel’s Reckoning (Remix)]
    Fallen Angel’s Reckoning (Remix) revisits a 2024 poem about heartbreak, broken promises, and falling from an imagined heaven, transforming its original ending into a darker meditation on resilience, self-reclamation, and learning to fly with broken wings.

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

  • The Vigil of the Broken Saint | Neo-Gothic Prose of Devotion, Grief & Vengeance

    Rowan Evans

    ☽ Introduction ☾

    In every myth, there is a cathedral of ruin; in every man who calls himself monster, a prayer that was never answered.
    This is the confessional of a city’s orphaned ghost — sworn not to salvation, but to the endless catechism of vengeance.
    This is…

    A lone vigilante kneels in a ruined gothic cathedral lit by moonlight through shattered stained glass, stone gargoyles above.
    A cathedral of shadows, where devotion wears bruises and hope decays into prayer.

    ☽ The Vigil of the Broken Saint ☾
    Prose by Rowan Evans

    I keep vigil in a cathedral of bone and sorrow — arches aching heavenward, ribs of stone bruised by night’s embrace.
    The city itself becomes my chapel: alleys the dark nave, gargoyles my silent witnesses, gargling rain and secrets.

    I wear grief like a monk’s habit, dyed black as confession and heavier than sin.
    Each night, I descend into prayer not with folded hands but with clenched fists — my psalms spoken in bruises and fractured breath.

    The stained glass here is cracked beyond repair: memories of a pearl necklace scattering like small white prayers on asphalt; a boy’s scream swallowed by gun smoke.
    Their colors are gone — only shards remain, catching no dawn, only moonlight and guilt.

    This city does not absolve.
    Its concrete saints are headless, the altar cold as a tombstone.
    I press my forehead to it anyway, blood wetting stone: a silent offering for a father who cannot forgive, a mother who cannot speak.

    Pain becomes sacrament.
    Every scar is a prayer bead, every fracture an unanswered supplication.
    The creed etched in marrow: Vengeance is devotion. Sacrifice is absolution.
    And when my knees ache from the stone, I rise still unredeemed.

    Yet night after night, I return.
    Drawn back to this ruined chapel by ghosts draped in shadow and sorrow.
    The gargoyles never weep, but I have learned to cry behind the cowl — hot salt hidden in darkness.

    Even the bats above seem to mourn with me, their wings whispering sermons in a language of hunger and hollow echo.
    My breath fogs in the cold, each exhale a psalm of stubborn defiance.

    There is no redemption here.
    Only the soft rot of hope turned grave-cold and the ache that will not leave.
    Still, I remain — bruised, unholy, unrepentant — because this, too, is devotion: to rise, even damned, and walk the city’s labyrinth once more.

    ☽ Benediction ☾

    May the ruin remember why it loved you.
    May the bruises become scripture.
    And though no salvation comes,
    may your broken vigil remain holy in its endlessness.

    🔗 You might also enjoy…

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

    The Vigil of the Clown Prince
    The Vigil of the Twisted Harlequin
    The Vigil of the First Son

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

    Therapy in Arkham
    Infinity Within – Plus Credits & End Credit Scene

    ✒️ 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