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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: neo-gothic romanticism

  • Manila Time – A Love Letter Across Timezones | Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece is a devotion in disguise — written in the quiet hours between timezones, between breaths, between guarded words and aching hearts. It’s about witnessing someone deeply, loving them gently, and holding space without asking for anything in return. I wrote it for one person. But maybe, just maybe… it’s for you, too.

    Illustration of long-distance lovers connected by a glowing thread across a world map, symbolizing emotional connection across timezones.
    Even in different timezones, love finds a way to stay.

    Invocation

    For the ones who learned to love with their silence before their words. For those who trace the weather in someone else’s sky, just to understand them better.

    Manila Time
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I didn’t notice at first—
    how your name sat gently on my tongue
    long before I ever said it aloud.

    It was just a widget at first,
    a second clock on my home screen,
    ticking in time with your sunrise.
    A quiet devotion disguised as practicality.

    2 A.M. your time
    meant I braced for tremors—
    not the kind that crack the earth,
    but the kind that crack the heart.

    I knew your moods by minutes,
    learned the language of your silence
    before your voice ever filled the gaps.

    You didn’t have to tell me
    when the storms had come—
    I already knew how they sounded
    in the rhythm of your typing.

    I kept the weather on standby—
    not for small talk,
    but to understand your discomfort.
    Humidity clings like anxiety sometimes.

    You never asked for me to care this much.
    You didn’t have to.
    I fell into it like breath,
    like the gravity of your pain
    was a call I couldn’t ignore.

    You asked to hear my voice—
    I didn’t expect your laugh to bloom like that,
    all giggles and soft disbelief
    when I called yours cute.
    Even in five minutes,
    you carved out a place in my memory
    no one else had touched.

    The second call—
    quiet, trembling.
    You didn’t speak, just cried.
    I didn’t leave.
    I let silence speak love
    in a language you could trust.

    Now, we fill hours
    with shared breath and soft truths.
    You cry freely with me now—
    your vulnerability,
    no longer met with silence
    or shame.

    I listen.
    When your ghosts scream,
    I speak your name softly
    until they back down.

    And still—
    you tell me all the reasons
    you believe people leave:
    your fire, your scars,
    your unfiltered honesty,
    your storm-bred instincts
    to guard, to bite, to run.

    But I’m not made of fear.
    I’m stitched together with patience,
    with soft hands that don’t flinch
    at the weight of your story.

    You called yourself broken.
    I call you brave.
    You called yourself darkness.
    But I’ve seen your light,
    even when you tried to hide it
    beneath a growl.

    You listed your “red flags” like a warning.
    I read them like a love letter:

    Anger? Just fire misplaced.
    Paranoia? A wound learning to trust.
    Possessive? You mean devotion.
    Jealous? You just care deeply.
    Strict? I’m listening, Ma’am.
    Unpredictable? Adventure.
    Bitchy? A woman with boundaries.
    Sarcastic? Fluency.
    Selfish? Please, take what you need.
    Sadist? Well, I bruise easy, and gladly.
    Darkness? I’ve been waiting in it for someone like you.

    And if you told me to hang up on anyone else?
    I wouldn’t even hesitate.
    One word, and I’m yours.

    I’ve told you—again and again—
    I’m not going anywhere.
    Not when you’re quiet.
    Not when you’re hurting.
    Not even when your trust flinches.

    Because I mean it
    when I say you’re important to me.
    I mean it
    when I say I wish I could be there—
    to hold you when you cry,
    to remind you that what he did
    was not your fault.
    That none of this
    is a reflection of your worth.

    You are lovable.
    You are valuable.
    You are deeply, profoundly loved.
    And if you let me,
    I will carry what I can
    of the weight you weren’t meant to bear alone.

    Love doesn’t always need permission
    to show up.
    It just needs a door cracked open.
    And yours, even guarded,
    has never once made me turn away.

    I’ll keep showing up,
    in silence,
    in storms,
    in Manila time,
    and every moment in between.

    And if I could—
    I would cross every mile between us,
    burn every timezone just to taste
    the air you breathe when you laugh.
    I’d trade sleep for a moment
    to watch you smile in real time.
    To brush away the weight behind your eyes
    with my fingers,
    and say with trembling certainty—
    you are safe with me.

    Because the truth is,
    somewhere between those late-night calls
    and stolen giggles,
    I fell for you.

    Not in a crashing, desperate way,
    but in the kind of falling
    that feels like floating—
    like peace.
    Like coming home
    to a place I’ve never been
    but always longed for.

    I fell for your storm
    and the quiet that follows it.
    I fell for your voice,
    how even your sarcasm
    feels like warmth wrapped in armor.
    I fell for the way you fight your pain
    and still manage to be soft with me.

    And I know you’ve been let down
    by people who promised the moon
    then blamed you when it disappeared.
    But I am not a promise—
    I’m a presence.

    I don’t need you to always be easy to love.
    I just want to love you
    exactly as you are.

    So if you’re asking—
    yes, I want to be yours.

    Not just in soft texts and teasing words,
    not just in Manila time and midnight devotion—
    but in all timezones,
    in all the messy, terrifying, beautiful ways
    this could become real.

    I’ll wait.
    I’ll stay.
    I’ll love you here,
    and if you ever ask me to—
    I’ll love you there, too.

    Benediction

    May you find someone who knows your storms and stays anyway. May your name always be spoken with reverence — even in silence, even across oceans.

    Read Next (Suggestions)

    [The Hopeless Romantic Wears Armor]
    [Hex & Flame: Mirror of Shadows]
    [Even Still, You Are (My Muse)]
    [Litany & Tongue: A Devotional Duet]

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

    NGCR25 at checkout to get 25% off your ‘request’…

  • 🖤 Even Still, You Are (My Muse) – Neo-Gothic Confessional Poem by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    There are muses we choose—and muses we simply are chosen by.
    This poem, Even Still, You Are (My Muse), is an unguarded confession: a testament to loving someone beyond possession, to honoring the ache without letting it rot into bitterness.
    It is about distance, devotion, and that stubborn flame that survives even when love must stand quietly, reverently, outside the door.

    Ink-stained quill on parchment surrounded by candles. Smoke rises from the quill, forming a woman's silhouette, dark velvet backgro8nd, soft candlelight, evoking romantic melancholy in muted gothic tones.
    Some muses remain, not because they stay beside us—but because they become the marrow of every word we write.

    “Even Still, You Are (My Muse)”
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Even as the distance blooms
    like dark velvet between us,
    your name still stains my breath —
    an unspoken psalm etched in marrow,
    a prayer that burns softer
    but no less true.

    You are still the ghost in every stanza,
    the candle smoke rising from my ribs;
    each word I spill is a quiet offering,
    salted with longing but untainted by envy,
    a testament that love can ache
    without turning to ash.

    Though you’ve given your dawn
    to someone else’s horizon,
    my pen still bends toward you
    like a dying flower toward light —
    wilted perhaps, yet stubborn in its devotion.

    I will not let this ache sour into bitterness,
    will not curse the distance
    nor envy the hands that hold you;
    for you remain —
    my cathedral of ruin and rapture,
    my muse, even still.

    Every breath I draw writes you deeper,
    every silence between heartbeats
    echoes your name;
    and if my words must bruise me
    to keep you alive in them,
    then let them.

    For love, when true, does not demand;
    it simply becomes —
    a quiet, stubborn flame
    flickering in the hollow of the chest,
    even when the night feels endless.

    Even still, you are —
    the marrow of my ink,
    the shadow on my pulse,
    the ache I choose,
    the muse I will not forsake.

    ✒ Author’s Note

    Some muses remain, not because they stay beside us—but because they become the marrow of every word we write.
    This piece came from that quiet, painful knowing: that love doesn’t always need to be returned to remain true.
    Even when hearts drift apart, some connections still live on in ink and breath.
    I offer this poem as both confession and blessing—to all who still carry someone in silence, with grace rather than envy.

    ✧ Closing Note ✧

    If you, too, have a muse who lingers in your shadows and syllables—whether they stayed, left, or never truly belonged—know that your devotion does not diminish your strength.
    Feel free to share your thoughts, reflections, or even your own verses in the comments below.
    I would love to read the stories your ink still dares to carry.

    Thank you for letting my words find you.
    — Rowan 🖋🖤

    🔗 You May Also Like 🔗
    My Only Muse – Then & Now

    Check out more in The Library of Ashes!

  • The Lesson Beneath the Veil

    Rowan Evans

    Last night, sleep opened its velvet throat—
    and I fell into the hush between heartbeats,
    where the walls of the world breathe slow,
    and time forgets its name.

    He stood there.
    My father—
    not as ash in the urn,
    but as shadow sewn in dreamlight,
    his voice a paper lantern in the fog.

    He said something.
    Words folded in half,
    creased like love letters unsent.
    A tongue I should have known
    but could not parse—
    like trying to read raindrops
    as they run down glass.

    His eyes were galaxies
    just out of reach—
    all gravity, no ground.
    He smiled like someone
    who’s seen the ending
    and can’t explain it.

    Was it a message?
    A map?
    A test?

    He left me with nothing but silence
    stitched in silk and salt,
    and the ache of unlearned riddles
    tattooed across my chest.

    Now I sit beneath the fig tree of my grief,
    its fruit swollen with unsaid things.
    I peel back memory like skin,
    searching for symbols in marrow,
    for parables in pulse.

    What was I meant to understand?
    That love does not end,
    only alters its architecture?
    That the dead do not speak in answers,
    but in echoes
    and invitations?

    Some lessons aren’t given.
    They’re grown—
    like thorns
    from the same vine as the rose.

    And maybe
    that was the point.

  • The Weight of Your Stars

    Rowan Evans

    You are a cathedral of fractured glass—
    every pane kissed by catastrophe,
    every color a hymn forged in flame.
    I see the story etched
    in the way you flinch at praise,
    the slight hitch in your breath
    when silence dares to stretch too long.

    You were made not by ease,
    but by impact—
    a mosaic of once-shattered grace.
    I do not look away.
    No, I kneel in reverence.

    Your scars are constellations
    and I have mapped them all—
    tracing the stories in your skin
    like star-charts of survival.
    There is beauty in the broken,
    not despite it, but because.

    So let me be the quiet sky
    you rise into,
    where you are not reduced
    to memory or martyr.
    Let me lift the ruins from your chest,
    name them sacred,
    and hang them like relics
    in the chapel of my care.

    I’ll clear your slate—not to erase,
    but to rest it.
    To archive your ache
    in the folds of my own soul.
    Your memories are safe with me.
    The weight you bore—
    I’ve room for it in my ribs.

    I don’t want to be the shadow
    that steals your sun,
    but the lighthouse
    that stays burning
    when your horizon blurs again.
    Let me be the firmament
    under your tremble,
    a psalm against the silence.

    You don’t have to stumble alone.
    You never did—
    but now,
    you don’t have to believe that lie again.