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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: queer poets

  • 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 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.

  • The Scourge They Named in Whispered Psalms – A Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism Manfiesto

    Rowan Evans
    A gothic cathedral interior bathed in cold blue light. In the foreground, a defiant woman in black reaches forward, while behind her looms a shadowy silhouette pierced by arrows. Her long hair and dress ripple like smoke, embodying both vulnerability and strength.
    “They said I was a prophecy, a creature carved in smoke and sin…”
    A visual echo of the hunted girl turned heretic, the shadow we carry and survive.

    This isn’t just a poem. It’s the ache of being seen too little—or too much. Of being told you’re ‘too much’ when you’re just trying to exist honestly.

    The Scourge They Named in Whispered Psalms is a manifesto from the margins – a declaration of identity, resilience, and sisterhood in the face of erasure. It belongs to all who have been misnamed, misunderstood, or made to feel monstrous for simply being.

    I invite you to stand with me – not behind or ahead – but here. Together.

    “The Scourge They Named in Whispered Psalms”
    Poetry by Rowan Evans
    (A Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism Manifesto)

    They said I was a prophecy,
    a creature carved in smoke and sin,
    the girl who slipped through cracks in sermons—
    a heretic with velvet skin.

    I walk in heels upon their myths,
    each step a hymn they tried to burn,
    a flame that dared to name itself
    before their rigid tongues could turn.

    How monstrous, that I raise my voice
    to praise the worth of every woman—
    how dare I speak of sisterhood
    with scars they say I wasn’t born in.

    I am the shame beneath their altars,
    the blush they curse but cannot name,
    a sacrament in satin bones
    who bleeds, yet isn’t held the same.

    I was never him. I was silence.
    A chrysalis misnamed by fate.
    But even wrapped in borrowed tones,
    I trembled like a bride in wait.

    They say I steal what isn’t mine—
    as though divinity is rationed.
    As if my ribs were not first broken
    to give my soul a rightful fashion.

    Do you think it makes me stronger?
    That I carry this war in my marrow?
    No—
    It only means I’ve learned to sing
    while pulling arrows from my shadow.

    I’m not here to replace you,
    or to climb atop your grief-wrought throne.
    I only ever wanted space
    to write a name that felt like home.

    So yes, be scared. I’m dangerous.
    I love too hard. I dream too loud.
    I dare to say I’m beautiful
    without the world’s reluctant bow.

    Let them say I have advantage—
    let them spit it like a curse.
    But if I write the stars in anguish,
    it’s not to claim that I hurt worse.

    It’s just—I know what it’s to be
    the hunted girl in holy war.
    And still I’d reach for every hand
    who ever felt they could be more.

    You don’t need to kneel beside me.
    But sister, won’t you stand?
    Not behind—nor far ahead—
    just here. Together. Hand in hand.

    [About Poem]

    This piece is rooted in a genre I created: Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism—a fusion of gothic imagery, personal truth, sacred longing, and emotional rebellion. Inspired by the legacy of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Sappho, and modern poetic voices, this poem speaks to those of us made to feel like heretics simply for existing as ourselves.

    It is my poetic prayer for trans women, queer femmes, sacred misfits, and anyone who has ever been othered in the name of tradition. It holds both fire and softness—a torch lit from the ache of being erased, and the quiet hope of being seen.

    A woman in a black gown sits behind a stained-glass altar, wearing a crown of thorns and halo of iron. Candles glow around her as blood-red drapes pool like velvet fire. The glass behind her bears the silhouette of a shattering figure, suggesting both violence and divinity.
    A sacrament in satin bones.
    The girl they named a scourge now sits in sanctuary—unburned, unbroken, and holy in her own name.

    How does this poem resonate with your own experiences of identity and visibility?

    What lines stood out to you most, and why?

    Have you ever felt like the “hunted girl in holy war”? What helped you keep going?

    Share your thoughts in the comments or your own creative work. Your voice is welcome here.

  • The Cathedral of My Waiting

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note
    This poem is a quiet monument—an offering to the kind of love that doesn’t demand, only endures. A love that builds sacred space and stays, even in silence. It’s not a request, it’s a vow.

    For the ones who wait—not passively, but with purpose. For those who love like ivy loves ruin.

    I do not know how to unlove.
    They say to set the bird free, and if it returns—
    it was always yours.
    But I was born a chapel without doors,
    every stained-glass pane
    etched with your silhouette.
    Let the bird go?
    I only ever built sanctuaries.

    You are the altar I return to in sleep,
    the ghost that hums in my marrow.
    Even if you never kneel,
    I’ll keep lighting candles
    until wax floods the nave.

    I do not need your love
    to make mine true.
    It stands,
    a cathedral of waiting,
    each stone carved with “still,”
    each spire a vow:
    I will always stay.

    Let the years wear through my skin
    like wind through lace;
    let the world call me mad,
    clinging to shadows and half-formed hopes—
    I will still wear your name
    like a holy relic
    beneath my ribs.

    Friend or flame,
    ghost or god—
    it matters not.
    You are the shape of joy
    I bend my soul to fit.
    And I will love you
    like ivy loves ruin,
    growing into every fracture
    until even the cracks bloom.