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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: heartbreak poetry

  • The Poet Signing Off – A Poem About Love, Heartbreak, and Emotional Healing

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece feels like a conversation with every version of myself that survived long enough to become this one.

    The angry versions. The grieving versions. The lonely versions. The hopeful ones too.

    For a long time, I thought pain would eventually turn me cold. That heartbreak, betrayal, abandonment—all of it—would harden me into someone bitter.

    But somewhere along the way, I realized something:

    I don’t want to become what hurt me.

    So this poem became less about suffering, and more about what comes after it. About the kind of love I believe in now—not performative, not transactional, not built on fantasy.

    Real love is presence. Attention. Safety. Memory. Patience.

    It’s showing up.

    And maybe that sounds simple. But I think simple things are often the hardest to do consistently.

    — Rowan Evans

    Candlelit desk with handwritten poetry symbolizing heartbreak and emotional healing
    Love is not perfection. It’s presence.

    The Poet Signing Off
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Hello—
    let me introduce myself.

    I am Rowan
    and no one else.

    The fire in my eyes
    may have faded—
    but I never let the world
    turn me jaded.

    I’m not bitter,
    even though
    maybe I should be.

    I’ve been through shit—
    yeah,
    I’ve really been through it.

    I’ve seen friends
    turn to strangers—

    and worse,
    turn to haters.

    Friends
    to enemies.

    Lovers
    to ghosts.

    Raise your glass—
    time for a toast.

    I thank you
    for the lessons,
    the pleasure
    and the pain.

    I turned heartbreak
    into ink,
    and bled across
    the page.

    You taught me
    what love is not.

    It’s not grand gestures
    or fancy gifts.

    It’s time
    and presence—
    not just presents.

    It’s stormy weather
    and sunny days.

    It’s seeing the weight
    someone carries,
    realizing
    they’re being buried.

    It’s listening
    and learning
    their stories.

    It’s seeing beneath
    the surface,
    lifting them up—

    that’s the purpose.

    Remember
    the little things.

    How she likes her coffee.
    The way she wakes up,
    randomly.

    And be there.

    If she wakes
    shaken,
    and needs somewhere
    safe—

    be there.

    That’s the rule
    I try to live by.

    I’ve been hurt before,
    and I don’t want
    to pass that hurt forward.

    I want to ease the ache.

    I know I can’t
    fix the breaks—

    but maybe
    we can mend
    the cracks with gold,
    showing people
    the beauty
    damage makes.

    Because cracks
    are not flaws—

    they’re stories written
    in a language
    older than spoken tongues.

    It’s love—

    older than empires,
    older than cavemen
    lighting the first fires.

    Romantic or platonic,
    it matters not.

    Love is the cure
    to the rot.

    I scribble on the page
    as the lights begin to fade.

    Candles flicker.
    Flames dance.

    And the poet’s pen
    finds its cadence.

    The poet
    signing off.

    Goodbye.

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

  • Psalm of the Half-Loved (A Prayer for the Mercy of Goodbye)

    Rowan Evans

    ✦ 🌹 Intro 🌹 ✦

    Heartbreak doesn’t always roar—it often arrives softly, like dusk turning to night.
    This piece is my attempt to sanctify that quiet ache: the plea not to be left half-loved, half-alive.
    It’s a prayer whispered through bruised ribs and ink-stained fingers; an invocation, a psalm, and a benediction for those who still dare to love—even when love does not return.

    loving you was never my ruin.
    It was my small rebellion
    against the cold.

    ✦ Invocation ✦

    Read this not as plea,
    but as offering.
    A candle lit in trembling hands,
    not to guide you home—
    but to keep my own shadows gentle.

    This is not a demand.
    It is a prayer whispered by ribs still aching,
    a softness that refuses to harden,
    even when hope burns to ash.

    ✦ Psalm of the Half-Loved ✦
    (A Prayer for the Mercy of Goodbye)

    If you must go,
    let it be as a mercy—
    not as a slow unraveling.

    Tell me cleanly,
    so I can kneel beside the ruin
    and name it what it is.

    I won’t beg you to stay.
    I won’t twist my love into chains.
    But gods—don’t leave me
    half-loved, half-alive.

    Don’t leave your shadow behind
    to haunt my trembling ribs,
    or your silence to bloom
    like poison in my marrow.

    If goodbye must come,
    let it come fully—
    let it burn, let it break,
    so I can gather the ash
    and call it sacred.

    I have carried love
    like an unrepentant prayer,
    even when it bruised me.
    I have knelt before absence,
    offering devotion to a ghost.

    But spare me the waiting—
    the quiet terror of not knowing
    if your heart still turns toward mine
    in the dark.

    If you must go,
    leave nothing for hope to cling to.
    Let my ache be honest,
    my grief unchained.

    And let me remember this:
    loving you was never my ruin.
    It was my small rebellion
    against the cold.

    ✦ Benediction ✦

    Go softly, even if you must go.
    Leave me not with maybes,
    but with mercy.

    May my love remain unrepentant,
    even as it mourns what could not stay.

    And if heartbreak must come,
    let it come honest—
    so my ruin may become reverence,
    my ache, a quiet vow:

    To keep loving,
    even when love does not return.
    To keep my softness alive,
    even when the world would rather see it buried.

    Amen.

    🖋 Author’s Note:

    I wrote this piece as both confession and protection spell. It’s easier, sometimes, to live with grief than with the endless ache of “maybe.”
    For anyone who’s been left half-loved: may your goodbye come clean, and may your softness outlive the pain.
    Even heartbreak, when spoken honestly, can become a quiet kind of grace.

    With ink & flame,
    — Rowan Evans

    🔗 You Might Also Enjoy 🔗

    My Only Muse – Then & Now
    Litany & Tongue – A Devotional Duet
    Epistle to the Name They Buried
    A Letter Never Sent – Prayer of the Heartbroken Heretic
    Psalm of the Spiraling Tongue – A Prayer Against Goodbye

  • Psalm of the Spiraling Tongue | Poetry by Rowan Evans — A Prayer Against Goodbye

    Rowan Evans

    ✦ Intro ✦

    There are moments when silence feels like a slow erasure — when not speaking threatens to unravel the fragile threads holding us together. This poem is a whispered litany, a raw confession from the place where fear of losing someone collides with the need to keep the connection alive. It’s a prayer not to clutch or possess, but simply to ward off the darkness that looms in the quiet.

    ✦ Psalm of the Spiraling Tongue ✦
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    i speak
    even when silence aches—
    because somewhere inside me
    lives the terror
    that stillness
    might become goodbye.

    so i keep talking,
    spilling words like prayers—
    not to hold you closer,
    but to keep the dark
    from swallowing
    what’s left
    of us.

    ✦ Benediction ✦

    May your words never falter when silence threatens.
    May your voice be the soft flame that holds back the dark.
    And if goodbyes must come, may they fall gently—
    leaving room for remembrance, not regret.

    Carry this prayer in your marrow,
    a quiet rebellion against the fading light.

    Go softly, beloved,
    and speak always,
    for even the trembling tongue is holy.