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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: patience

  • Not Used to This – A Poem About Patience, Trauma, and Intimacy

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem grew from a quiet, unfolding space between two people learning to hold each other with patience and care. It explores the fragility of trust, the reflection of our traumas, and the slow, careful ways we allow someone to stay when we are used to people leaving. It is about intimacy that is not loud or dramatic, but steady, mirrored, and healing.

    Two people sitting across from each other, hands almost touching, in a dimly lit room with warm candlelight.
    “The quiet intimacy of two hearts learning to hold each other gently, reflected in soft shadows and warm light.”

    Not Used to This
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’m not used to this.
    I’m used to doors closing,
    to footsteps fading
    before I can even speak.

    I’m not used to this.
    I’m not used to someone staying,
    leaning into the spaces
    I’ve long left empty.

    I bring my scars like lanterns,
    flickering, fragile,
    and you—
    you trace their edges with care,
    never flinching,
    never asking for more than I can give.

    I see your hesitations,
    the quiet tremor behind your smile,
    the shadowed corners of your past
    you tuck into your sleeves.
    You are careful with me,
    as I am with you.

    We move slowly,
    like two hands learning each other
    in the dark,
    tracing lines of trust
    over wounds that still ache.

    I am wary.
    I am heavy with history.
    I have loved and been left.
    I have built walls
    taller than myself.

    And still,
    you do not falter.
    Your patience is steady,
    like a river bending around stones,
    never harsh, never rushing,
    but always persistent.

    I notice the way you watch me,
    like you’re memorizing my silence,
    like you see the cracks
    and choose to stay anyway.
    I notice the way you hesitate,
    how your care mirrors my caution,
    how your wounds reflect mine
    without judgment or shame.

    We are both unpracticed
    in this kind of gentleness,
    this kind of giving.
    And yet—
    we are learning together.

    I am not used to it.
    I am not used to being held
    in someone else’s patience,
    to being mirrored in someone else’s heart.

    And I wonder—
    perhaps this is what it is to be seen,
    truly seen,
    and not abandoned.

    We do not need words for it.
    We do not need proof.
    The small gestures,
    the quiet constancy,
    the mirrored care—
    speak louder than anything we have ever known.

    I am not used to this.
    But I am beginning to be.
    And somehow, in this fragile, tender space,
    I am learning that it is enough
    for both of us to stay.

    For more poetry, check 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