This piece is my rejection of dramatic love and my acceptance of intentional love.
It’s easy to romanticize sacrifice. It’s harder—and far more meaningful—to choose presence. To choose consistency. To choose to live well and grow, not out of obligation, but because someone inspires you to.
This isn’t about burning out for someone. It’s about moving toward them. Slowly. Intentionally. Alive.
— Rowan Evans
Not a promise to burn— a promise to move closer, alive.
I’ll Keep Living (Moving Toward You) Poetry by Rowan Evans
I won’t say I’d die for you,
that’s cliché,
but what I will say is—
I’ll keep living for you.
I’ll keep being there for you.
I’ll keep moving toward you.
Don’t know what it is,
but I’m drawn to you—
pulled by something soft,
something I can’t name.
I’m just a moth, I guess—
and you’re the flame,
I don’t want tamed.
I want to softly dance in your glow.
Băobèi was written last year during a season of longing—when affection felt vast, distant, and almost mythic. It lived quietly in my drafts, waiting for a moment when it could breathe on its own.
This poem is devotion rendered as geography: islands, blossoms, moonlight, and stars becoming a language for love. It is about carrying someone in every word, every breath, every imagined horizon. About how a name can become a compass.
Some poems are born loud. This one waited.
A garden of light—where devotion blooms between shore, sky, and dream.
Băobèi Poetry by Rowan Evans
Băobèi—
your beauty rivals that of the Sakura,
petals like whispered secrets
drifting through my ink-stained veins.
And I got your name,
tatted on the tip of my tongue,
your essence lives in every word that I say,
haunting the shadows of my pen,
echoing in the silence between heartbeats.
Now I’m hopping islands, in search of
your divineness. Your royalty,
I bow to you, your highness.
I crowned you the queen
of my twilight kingdom.
Your loyal subjects,
all shadows of my thoughts.
Cherry blossoms fade,
but your radiance lingers,
Orchid petals from Mindoro
drip like honeyed secrets,
Lotus from distant ponds
mirrors your serene grace,
Frangipani drifts across the wind,
carrying your laughter.
Sampaguita blooms in hidden corners,
its tiny white stars like your quiet strength,
Ylang-ylang whispers perfume into the night,
each scent a pulse of your heartbeat
I am drawn to like the tide.
I trace the heavens in your honor—
a moon suspended over Manila Bay,
its reflection trembling across dark water,
mirroring the tremor in my chest
each time your name passes my lips.
The Milky Way drapes over islands and mountains,
a silken veil for your light to wander beneath,
and I follow, tracing your essence
through ink, shadow, and the spaces between heartbeats,
until the world itself becomes
a garden of your light.
You are the rose in my ruin,
the bloom I cradle in the ashes of my nights,
the ink I spill across silent pages,
and I am forever your humble witness,
your loyal poet in a kingdom
built from devotion, dusk, and flame.
Some moments are so intense, so ridiculously consuming, that your body forgets how to function, your words trip over themselves, and your thoughts scatter. Rewired (Flustered & Yours) comes from one of those moments—a truth too big for neat packaging, too raw for polish.
This poem is about what it feels like when a single person rewires your entire system. When one word, one message, one call can leave your chest racing, your lungs screaming, and your mind spinning. It’s messy. It’s unhinged. It’s completely, unapologetically honest.
Not every confession arrives clean. Not every feeling lands gracefully. Some of them stumble, fumble, and fall—just like the words in this poem. And yet, that’s the point. This is the closest I’ve come to capturing what it feels like to be utterly, irreversibly flustered by someone who matters more than anything.
Breathless, rewired, and undone.
Rewired (Flustered & Yours) Poetry by Rowan Evans
One word—I’m shook. Shaken to the core. Bend me, break me, you’ll have me— begging for more.
My tongue tied, knots that try and stop the words. They slip, tumble, fumble from my lips. Tripping over themselves, but I wouldn’t want to be— anywhere else.
And it hurts a little, but I kind of like it though. I’m so— masochistic. In love with you, so sadistic.
It’s like a— slow burn on my skin, it’s become my favorite sin. So when you look at me, my brain forgets how to breathe, automatically. I’ve got to think about it, I have to do it manually.
Inhale, my lungs yell, as I become light-headed. Struggling to keep my thoughts straight. As my brain races, but not in the way I’m used to. You are the cause, this is what you do.
Exhale— feel the air stick in my lungs. Like my body is in full protest. Not against you, but against what it’s supposed to do. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to survive.
Like knowing you, has rewired every part of me. This is what it looks like— how you fluster me. How you’re everything I crave. The way one word, can make me cave.
The rhythm in my chest? It beats for you. These lungs, they breathe for you. It’s like you’ve claimed me, without staking a claim— I’m just sayin’, I’m yours.
Curious for more? Step intoThe Library of Ashes, where every poem has a story to tell.
Poetry by Rowan Evans 