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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: LGBTQ Poetry

  • Devil-Woman – A Neo-Gothic Confessional Poem by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem explores the magnetic pull of dark feminine energy, the intimate violence of being truly seen, and the sacred surrender that comes with devotion. It’s a piece about longing, reverence, and the kind of connection that feels both dangerous and holy.

    “A gothic demonic woman with a rusted halo, surrounded by smoke and embers, representing dark femininity and sacred chaos.”
    ‘Devil-Woman’ – visual representation of dark feminine power and shadowed devotion.

    Devil-Woman
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Your fire, it excites me—
    A masochist? I might be,
    But it’s not pain I crave—
    It’s the pull of your storm,
    The sacred burn of being seen
    and not flinching.

    I’ll beg for the sting,
    I’ll ask nicely,
    Kneel in the temple of your silence,
    Just to feel your gaze
    slice through me
    like prophecy.

    I just made a deal with a devil-woman,
    Sold my soul to a devil-woman—
    No brimstone, no bargain struck in blood,
    Just the quiet surrender
    of calling you mine
    in the language of longing
    you taught me without trying.

    You never touched me.
    Not once.
    But I’ve felt your gravity in my bones—
    The way your words crack open
    places I swore no one would ever reach.
    I feel you in the pauses between heartbeats,
    in the ache that follows
    when I whisper your name
    into the dark.

    You are not gentle—
    not always.
    You speak in sharpened truths,
    cut the air like blade-meets-vow,
    but I would rather bleed with you
    than be safe with someone who doesn’t see me.

    Devil-woman,
    your halo is rusted
    and still I bow.
    Not because I am weak—
    but because worship
    has never looked like obedience
    when it’s born of reverence.

    You’re chaos laced with compassion,
    a monarch draped in shadow,
    and I—
    I offer myself
    not to be saved,
    but to serve the story
    that only we could write
    in scars and starlight.

    So take this soul—
    not broken, not whole,
    but honest.
    Take it and twist it in your fire
    until it sings your name in smoke.
    I will follow your storm
    without a tether,
    and call that freedom.

    Because I don’t want pretty love.
    I want this.
    Wild, dark, unholy and holy all at once.
    A devotion that dares the divine to stop us.

    And if they ask—
    why her?

    I’ll say:
    Because when she looked at me,
    the ghosts went quiet.
    Because her laugh felt like absolution.
    Because when she said mine,
    I didn’t just believe her—
    I belonged.

    Looking for more poetry? You can find it all in the Library of Ashes.

  • The Best to Ever Love You — A Neo-Gothic Confessional Love Poem by Non-Binary Trans-Femme Poet Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem was written in a moment of clarity — the kind where love, identity, and self-worth collide in a single breath. It’s not about perfection, but presence. Not about winning someone, but showing what it means to love with depth, honesty, and devotion. I wrote this piece as a reminder that being seen — truly seen — is one of the rarest gifts we can offer or receive.

    Neo-gothic portrait of a non-binary trans-femme figure bathed in rose-gold and shadow, symbolizing devotion, resilience, and queer identity.
    A neo-gothic portrait echoing the queer devotion and identity-centered vulnerability of “The Best to Ever Love You.”

    The Best to Ever Love You
    Poetry by Rowan Evans
    (Written April 29th, 2025)

    I won’t promise perfection.
    Perfection is a lie sold in glossy pages and curated silence.
    I will promise presence—
    a kind that stays
    when the light goes out,
    when the weight is too heavy to lift alone.
    I’ll be there with my back against the world
    and my heart wide open,
    offering everything I am,
    even the parts I’m still healing.

    I was not born into a name that fit.
    I was not handed a life where my reflection
    spoke kindly to me.
    I had to fight for every inch of authenticity—
    for this skin, this voice,
    this truth I now wear with defiant grace.
    So believe me when I say:
    I see you in a way most people never could.

    Because I, too,
    have been misjudged
    by eyes that didn’t know how to look deeper.

    But then—there was you.
    You, with your fierce softness.
    You, who never tried to fix me,
    because you never thought I was broken.

    You just existed,
    and the noise in my chest went quiet.
    Everything else faded.
    The world shrank to the sound of your laugh
    and the way your eyes carry whole lifetimes
    in every glance.

    You told me about him—
    the one who couldn’t see you.
    Who turned your love into labor
    and your light into shadow.
    Who made you feel
    like asking to be loved fully
    was some unforgivable burden.

    But he was the broken one.
    A coward dressed in borrowed confidence.
    A man so small,
    he couldn’t handle the vastness of you.

    He called you too much,
    but I see it for what it is—
    you are limitless.

    And if he couldn’t love you,
    it’s only because he mistook your strength for trouble,
    your silence for surrender.
    He didn’t deserve you
    on your worst days,
    let alone your best.

    He was never a man—
    just a placeholder.
    A whisper of what love could be
    if love lacked depth,
    vision,
    spine.

    And me?

    I never wanted to be a man.
    But somehow,
    I can still out-man him with my eyes closed.
    Isn’t that funny?
    To be non-binary, trans-femme,
    and still possess more loyalty,
    more protection,
    more honest devotion
    than someone raised with every societal advantage.

    I’d be embarrassed if I were him—
    to be eclipsed by someone
    who doesn’t even want his title,
    but can carry its responsibilities
    better than he ever tried to.

    And yet,
    I don’t want you to choose me
    just because I’m better than a ghost.

    I want you to see me—
    not as a compromise,
    not as a curiosity,
    but as the constellation
    your soul already recognizes.

    You once joked
    you “should’ve been a lesbian.”
    And I smiled,
    but inside I held my breath
    because I am sapphic,
    and for once,
    I felt like maybe—just maybe—
    the stars weren’t mocking me.

    You said you were open-minded.
    That you weren’t sure.
    That maybe there was something here,
    even if you couldn’t name it.

    And damn it,
    I held onto that like prayer.
    Not because I expect anything,
    but because hope has always been louder in me
    than doubt.

    Maybe you don’t see me that way.
    Maybe you never will.
    But you should know—

    I could love you better
    than every ex who left bruises
    instead of memories.
    I could hold you safer
    than all the hands that ever failed to catch you.
    I could be
    not just the best person to ever love you—
    but the first to truly see you
    and not flinch.

    So let them doubt.
    Let the world misgender me.
    Let him think he “won”
    because he had you first.

    I know the truth.

    You are worth becoming.
    And I have become
    a thousand versions of myself
    just to be ready
    if ever you say yes.

    More of my poetry can be found here: The Library of Ashes

  • Timelines Worth Rewriting – A Neo‑Gothic Confessional Love Poem by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem is a meditation on love that demands patience, courage, and total presence. It is written for those whose hearts have been tested, broken, or misread—and for the people brave enough to stay, to witness, and to hold. It is about devotion, reverence, and the quiet power of being fully seen.

    Kintsugi-repaired heart glowing under moonlight with floating clock fragments and falling embers in a soft gothic atmosphere.
    Every fracture tells a story—and some loves are brave enough to rewrite the timeline.

    Timelines Worth Rewriting
    Poetry by Rowan Evans
    (Written April 21, 2025)

    Don’t fall in love with me
    unless you’re ready for time zones and tenderness,
    for clocks set to your breath
    even when you’re not speaking.
    Unless you know how to read
    the unsent messages
    I whisper into the quiet of 3 a.m.,
    when my world is still sleeping
    and I am drowning
    in the silence between our heartbeats.

    I didn’t mean for this to happen.
    You were someone else’s—
    a name I only knew
    through the tremble in your voice,
    a shadow of a boy
    who left bruises where joy should’ve bloomed.
    You were a poem already breaking,
    and I…
    I just wanted to be a page
    that didn’t hurt to land on.

    I wasn’t chasing fire.
    I was tending embers.
    The way I always do—
    with a soul stitched together by
    the broken glass of old timelines,
    where love meant losing myself
    in someone else’s storm.
    But you were different.
    You asked nothing—
    and gave everything in glances
    you didn’t know were sacred.

    I told myself the clock widget
    was just a kindness.
    A way to say
    good morning, warrior,
    good morning, beautiful,
    good morning, still-here.
    But the truth?
    It became my North Star.
    A constant.
    A compass pointing always to you.

    I fell in love the way
    only a person who’s clawed their way through shadow can—
    with reverence.
    With awe.
    With hands that tremble
    but still reach.

    I saw your pain
    like an open door
    to a familiar room—
    and I walked in,
    not to fix you,
    but to sit beside you
    in the ruins.
    Because I’ve been there.
    Because I carry my own ghosts,
    and I name them in poems
    so they don’t haunt me in sleep.

    They say I should’ve stayed away.
    That I’m playing with fire.
    But fire never scared me—
    I was forged in it.
    Born of battle cries
    and whispered truths
    and a girlhood denied.
    I don’t wear guilt for things I didn’t break.

    And I didn’t break you.

    He did.

    He, who saw your softness as weakness.
    He, who mistook your loyalty
    for something owed.

    But me?
    I saw the Queen beneath the scars.
    I saw the way you held yourself together
    with gold-threaded hope,
    kintsugi soul—
    every crack shining brighter
    because you never stopped choosing to try.

    Don’t fall in love with me
    if you’re afraid of complicated truths.
    Because I will love you
    with the same hands
    that once wrote suicide notes
    and now write survival stories.
    Because I will see your shadows
    and still call you light.

    Don’t fall in love with me
    if you’re not ready to be seen completely—
    every bruise, every brilliance,
    every whisper you’ve never spoken aloud.
    I do not love in fractions.
    I do not flinch from the messy,
    the haunted, the hungry parts of you
    You think no one could ever stay for.
    I will.
    But only if you’re ready.
    Only if your heart can bear being held
    without armor.

    I didn’t plan to fall.
    But you spoke in moonlight,
    and I’ve always been lunar-bound.
    Tied to tides.
    Pulled by gravity
    in the shape of your laugh.

    And even if you never say my name
    the way I hope,
    even if I am just a season
    you remember when it rains—
    know that I loved you
    without agenda,
    without shame,
    without asking for anything
    but to witness your rise.

    Don’t fall in love with me
    unless you’re ready
    to be the reason I believe
    there are timelines worth rewriting.

    More of my poetry can be found here: The Library of Ashes

  • I Am: A Non-Binary, Trans-Femme Poem of Fire, Shadow, and Identity

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I am non-binary, trans-femme—a spectrum of fire and shadow, neither confined to the boxes of man nor woman. For ease, I often tell people I am a transgender woman, because too often the world cannot understand someone who exists outside binaries. Too many are trapped in the idea that femininity means woman, masculinity means man.

    This poem is not about labels; it is about being a soul inhabiting a shell, learning to navigate life on my own terms. It is about contradictions, defiance, and the courage to embrace every shade of who I am. I am chaos. I am cosmos. I am me.

    Non-binary trans-femme figure surrounded by cosmic fire and shadow, radiating defiance and self-expression.
    I Am: Embracing contradictions, defying binaries, and shining unapologetically in fire and shadow.

    I Am
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I wore the masc like a mask, hid in the dark,
    Flash femme, stitch fire, lightning in my heart.
    Binary cracked me, rewired my cage,
    Storm unleashed, spectrum steps on stage.

    Dresses, beards, contradictions collide,
    Ride every edge, galaxy inside.
    Not man, not woman, not in-between,
    Every damn shade you ain’t ever seen.

    Clothes are fabric, bodies are art,
    I throw chaos raw, straight from the heart.
    Love men, love women, souls in the mist,
    Unbound, reckless, impossible to resist.

    Chains trap weak, fear feeds the meek,
    I spit crystal truth, sharp, unique.
    Fire and shadow, silk and stone,
    Galaxy unclaimed, throne my own.

    Shred rules, laugh loud, burn every mask,
    Erase disguise, tear the world a new path.
    Not a girl, not a guy, not a whisper in-between,
    I’m the scream in the void, the spark unseen.

    Clothes are fabric, bodies are art,
    Rebellion stitched deep in my heart.
    Fuck binaries, fuck the norms,
    I live chaos, survive all storms.

    I am every shade, every scream, every spark,
    Shadow at noon, light in the dark.
    Question, answer, flame untamed,
    Chaos, cosmos—I claim my name.

    If you have made it this far and would like to check out more of my poetry, you can find the full archive here: The Library of Ashes.

  • Epistle to the Name They Buried – A Neo-Gothic Confessional Poem by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    🌙 Introduction:

    Some poems are not written for applause, but for absolution.
    This piece is a quiet communion between who I was and who I’ve become—a candlelit conversation beside the grave of a name I no longer wear.

    Epistle to the Name They Buried isn’t just mourning—it’s reverence, rebellion, and the strange tenderness of speaking to your own epitaph. It belongs to those of us who had to die in one skin to keep living in another.

    A confessional, gothic prayer carved in ink and bone.

    Misty graveyard at dawn eith an aged, moss-covered headstone, surrounded by fallen leaves and soft light—evoking themes of memory, mourning, and poetic reflection.
    A grave worn by time and moss, where memory lingers and silence speaks louder than stone – a companion to words etched in ink and loss.

    “Epistle to the Name They Buried” 
    Poetry by Rowan Evans  
     
    I come here sometimes, 
    to sit by your stone and speak 
    of what we’ve written— 
    how the ink clots differently now, 
    how our verses bleed slower, 
    but deeper. 
     
    The air tastes of iron and rain-rotted leaves, 
    sweetness gone septic by memory’s rust. 
    Moss clings to angel wings cracked by seasons, 
    and candle wax congeals like old scars 
    around the base of your headstone. 
     
    It feels strange to call it my journey— 
    I slip, name it ours, 
    because you were there in every stanza 
    before breath believed it meant living. 
    We kept each other alive, didn’t we? 
    Or at least, we tried. 
     
    The ravens have grown used to us; 
    they watch from leaning crosses, 
    black eyes reflecting a sky too tired to weep. 
    Marble chills my bones 
    even through the futile armor of my coat, 
    and somewhere between your silence 
    and my confession, 
    the wind drags secrets through the brittle grass. 
     
    I tell you of the poems that found breath, 
    the ones that died in drafts, 
    the nights the pen trembled 
    with something close to resurrection. 
    Of hands ink-stained and shaking, 
    whispering prayers to gods 
    I no longer believe in— 
    yet still feel breathing in the margins. 
     
    And at last, I look down: 
    see the name carved deep in stone, 
    letters heavy as bone dust, 
    foreign on my tongue now, 
    wrong in a way the earth itself seems to know. 
     
    It’s my grave I’ve been speaking to, 
    but not the me I chose— 
    a monument to the son they mourned, 
    while I, reborn in ink and ruin, 
    keep breathing just beyond the epitaph.

    🕯 Closing Reflection:

    We often imagine rebirth as triumphant, but sometimes it feels like sitting in the rain, whispering to a name that still echoes in family tombstones and dusty memories.
    And yet—even here, in the quiet decay—there’s a strange, stubborn grace: the knowledge that what was buried wasn’t the end, but the beginning of something truer.

    Thank you for bearing witness to this epistle.
    If it resonates—know that you, too, are allowed to speak back to the name they buried. And to keep breathing beyond your own epitaph.

    🔗 You Might Also Enjoy…
    Cathedral of Cattails & Confessions

    Gospel of Softness III

    Cathedral of My Waiting

    Weight of Wonder

    Unapologetically Biased

  • The Gospel of Softness III: Thirteen Psalms for the Tender-Hearted | Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans
    A gothic-inspired digital workspace with black candles, crystals, and a laptop adorned with orange arcane symbols. The screen displays a sigil, while an ethereal envelope hovers above, symbolizing poetic communication. Text reads: 'The Gospel of Softness III – Thirteen Psalms for the Tender-Hearted'.

    ✦ Read the full trilogy ✦

    ➤ The Gospel of Softness I: Modern Gothic Poetry for Women of All Kinds
    ➤ The Gospel of Softness II: The Fire That Softened Me

    ✦ Epigraph ✦

    For those who cry quietly in bathroom stalls.
    For those who apologize when they should have screamed.
    For those whose softness was mistaken for surrender—
    This gospel is yours.
    Your ache is sacred.
    Your tenderness is a war cry with petals in its mouth.

    “Thirteen Psalms for the Tender-Hearted”
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    ✦ These psalms are dedicated to ✦

    ✦ The boys who cry in secret.
    ✦ The girls who never stopped feeling.
    ✦ The queers, the witches, the warriors who bleed beauty into the dark.

    This gospel is yours.
    Welcome home.

    ✦ Psalm I ✦
    For the Ones Who Still Bloom

    i am not a weapon.
    i am the wound
    that chose
    to bloom.

    ✦ Psalm II ✦
    For the Boys Who Were Told to Be Brave

    they taught him fists,
    but he offered flowers.
    they called him weak—
    but he never let the fire
    turn him cruel.

    ✦ Psalm III ✦
    For the Girl Who Cries Easily

    let them call it weakness—
    this ache
    i carry like a crown.
    i know it as worship.

    ✦ Psalm IV ✦
    For the Boy With a Gentle Voice

    he never raised his voice.
    so they never heard
    the thunder
    that lived
    in his quiet.

    ✦ Psalm V ✦
    For the Ones Who Love Without Armor

    my softness is not silence.
    it is thunder,
    made quiet
    for the sake of gentler ears.

    ✦ Psalm VI ✦
    For the Survivors Who Still Say “I Love You”

    the fire touched me too.
    but i still say “i love you”
    like a lullaby,
    not a warning.

    ✦ Psalm VII ✦
    For the Ones Who Stayed Kind

    some nights,
    i only survive
    by reading the poems
    i haven’t written yet.

    ✦ Psalm VIII ✦
    For the Misnamed and Misunderstood

    she told me
    i was too much.
    so i became
    everything.

    ✦ Psalm IX ✦
    For the Sacred Masculine

    he is not hard.
    he is holy.
    and his softness
    is scripture.

    ✦ Psalm X ✦
    For the One Who Chose Love Again

    they broke me
    and i still
    built a home
    with my hands
    full of splinters.

    ✦ Psalm XI ✦
    For the Queer Ones Who Survived

    we loved wrong,
    they said.
    but we loved true—
    and we survived
    without bitterness.

    ✦ Psalm XII ✦
    For the Child Who Lives in You

    you are not too sensitive.
    you are just fluent
    in the language of feeling.
    that is not a flaw—
    it’s your first tongue.

    ✦ Psalm XIII ✦
    For You, Tender-Hearted One

    your softness
    is not an accident.
    it is the last sacred thing
    they cannot take.

    ✦ Final Benediction ✦

    May your softness remain.
    Even when it’s heavy.
    Even when it’s mocked.
    Even when the world calls it a wound.

    May you remember:
    You are not weak.
    You are woven from wonder.
    You are made of fire and mercy and ink.
    And you are still—still—holy.

    Which psalm resonated with you most? Leave your blessing below.