Author’s Note

Pyres of the Patriarchy is a ritual of words, fire, and defiance. It honors those who resisted, those who were silenced, and those who still carry the courage of rebellion in their veins. Salem’s shadows and flickering flames become a lens to see the power, rage, and liberation in claiming what the world tried to take away. This poem is both homage and invocation—a call to rise, to burn away chains, and to celebrate the sacred fire that refuses to be tamed.

— Rowan Evans

Pyres of the Patriarchy
Poetry by Rowan Evans

In Salem’s darkened heart, the night exhales,
and shadows twist like ink in candlelight.
Whispers coil around bones,
around lungs, around my pulse—
curses pressed to lips
that tremble with memory and rage.

The witches rise.
Not silent. Not broken.
Their eyes burn with histories
too long ignored.
Their hands trace the edges of power
that was stolen,
that was denied,
that we take back
with every heartbeat, every breath.

The pyres flare,
and the chains writhe in their heat.
Patriarchy bends, fractures, collapses,
its ash swirling into moonlight,
into the smoke of everything they told us
we could never be.

No more the quiet screams
that haunted hallways
we were told to shrink inside.
No more the weight of “never enough.”
We kneel in fire.
We rise in flame.
We are the storm they feared
and the hymn they could not silence.

From shackled wrists,
from charred stakes,
from every whispered lie,
we rise.
We rise,
and the night bends with us,
carries our laughter
through every darkened room,
through every shadow left unclaimed.

I feel it in my chest—
their power in me,
their defiance in my hands.
The fortress of the old world trembles,
crumbles,
and we dance
in the embers of what they called impossible.

A new dawn blooms in Salem’s bones.
The pyres burn bright,
not for vengeance,
but for devotion:
to our shadows,
to our fire,
to the witches we always were
and always will be.

If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]