Author’s Note

This poem is a tribute to the fierce resilience of love—the kind that’s messy, painful, and profoundly real. It honors the hopeless romantics who bear their scars like armor, who choose presence over perfection, and who dare to keep their hearts bare in a world that often demands they harden. This is for anyone who has ever loved with trembling hands and steady hope.

The Hopeless Romantic Wears Armor
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I’ve been told—
“You must be a romantic,”
like it was something delicate,
a petal too soft for stormy weather.
But they don’t see the thorns
I’ve stitched into my smile,
the way I carry hope
like a blade in my boot.

They mistake softness for surrender,
but I have loved through hurricanes—
hands trembling,
heart steady,
singing lullabies to ghosts
who only ever came to haunt.

I’ve written poems to silence,
and bled ink for people
who didn’t know what it meant
to be cherished
without condition.

I’ve fallen for echoes,
mistaken attention for affection,
believed in almosts
like they were promises.

But still—
I light candles in empty rooms,
not because I expect someone to walk in,
but because love
is a ritual I perform
even when I’m the only one watching.

I romanticize survival
because I know the cost
of staying soft
in a world that sharpens everything it touches.

And yes,
I’m a hopeless romantic—
not because I believe in fairy tales,
but because I believe
that even cracked hearts
can bloom again.

I believe in letters left on pillows,
in forehead kisses before panic sets in,
in waiting through silence
without letting it change me.

Call it foolish,
but I will always choose the ache of loving
over the emptiness of apathy.

I don’t need love to be easy—
I just need it to be real.

So if I love you,
know this:

I will not run when the storms come.
I will hold your hand through the wreckage
and whisper,
“This is not the end.”

Because love, to me,
has never been about perfection—
it’s about presence.

And I will be present.
Even when it hurts.
Even when it scares me.
Even when it means
standing alone
with my armor made of poetry,
and my heart still bare beneath it.

Closing Note

In the end, maybe that’s what it means to be a hopeless romantic:
To carry tenderness like armor, to keep loving even when it hurts,
and to trust that even the most wounded hearts can still bloom green in the ruins.

Because it does hurt. And sometimes it feels foolish.
But I’d rather ache from loving too deeply than be left untouched by apathy.

Read Next (Suggestions)

[Splinter Gospel] — A Poem of Fracture & Unrepentant Softness
[Cry to the Quiet: Sacred Desperation] — A Neo-Gothic Confessional Poem
[Luminescence & Shadow: A Forbidden Litany] — A Neo-Gothic Confessional Narrative Poem
[The Bite & Eternal Thirst] — Dark Love, Shadowed Offering & Crimson Hunger

Or explore the full archive in [The Library of Ashes]—and if your own confession aches to be written, [commission a custom poem here].

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