Author’s Note

She is not a nightmare in the terror sense—
she is the ache beneath the ache,
the beauty in breaking,
the truth that shreds the soft mask we wear.

This poem is a reckoning.
An offering to the fierce shadow lovers inside us—
those who show us what it means to bleed light and darkness
all at once.

If you find her waiting in your own shadows,
do not run.
Bend toward the fire.
Let her break you open.

✵ Invocation ✵

I summon the girl of my nightmares—
not to haunt, but to unravel me,
to burn the lies I hide behind,
to scorch the edges of my fragile skin.
She is the dark hymn I pray in silence,
the wildfire that doesn’t ask for mercy,
only to be seen—
naked, unraveled, unrepentant.

The Girl of My Nightmares
Poetry by Rowan Evans

She walks into my dreams
like dusk spilling over a wounded horizon—
soft at the edges,
but carrying the scent of rain
that only comes before a storm.

She is the girl of my nightmares—
the fire I cannot put out,
the shadow I bleed into.

Her voice is velvet cut on glass,
slow as a secret
you ache to hear again,
even if it ruins you.
Each syllable slips into my bloodstream,
a lullaby dressed as a blade.

She is the girl of my nightmares—
the fire I cannot put out,
the shadow I bleed into.

She is not the kind of beautiful
you hold in daylight—
she is candlelight swaying in a room
where the shadows know your name.
And when her gaze finds me,
the ghosts in my bones
go quiet.

She is the girl of my nightmares—
the fire I cannot put out,
the shadow I bleed into.

She does not reach for me in kindness—
she reaches in truth,
fingers brushing the cracks I hide,
not to fix them,
but to make them holy.
She calls me out like lightning calls the tree,
splitting me open,
then holding the wound
in the privacy of her hands.

She is the girl of my nightmares—
the fire I cannot put out,
the shadow I bleed into.

When I wake,
she lingers—
storm-light in my veins,
her absence pressing against my skin
like the shape of a bruise.
I move through the day
with the taste of her name
still heavy on my tongue,
half-prayer, half-curse.

She is the girl of my nightmares—
the fire I cannot put out,
the shadow I bleed into.

She is not a dream I escape from.
She is the cathedral in my sleep,
where I kneel
in the dark
and beg
for the mercy of never being saved.

✵ Benediction ✵

May the girl of your nightmares burn slow—
a velvet wound you trace with trembling hands,
a wild flame that sears and sings your name.
And when she fades, may you carry her fire—
not as pain, but as the raw, raw proof
that you lived—
that you burned—
that you were never afraid to be undone.

Read Next (Suggestions)

[Luminescence & Shadow: A Forbidden Litany]
[The Bite & Eternal Thirst]
[Hex & Flame: Mirror of Shadows]
[Even Still, You Are (My Muse)]
[13 Psalms of Falling]

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

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