Sometimes the hardest place to be is alone with your own thoughts. Not distracted. Not performing. Not numbed. Just you—unfiltered, unguarded, uncomfortably present.
This piece isn’t about self-love as a slogan. It’s about self-confrontation. About whether you can remain seated when there’s no one left to impress, no one left to blame, and no one left to lean on.
Because growth doesn’t begin when things feel good. It begins when you stop running.
— Rowan Evans
Sometimes the hardest company to keep is your own.
Can You Sit With Yourself? Poetry by Rowan Evans
Can you sit
with yourself?
Not on a pedestal,
not on a shelf—
can you fucking
sit with your
self?
In your thoughts,
in your mind—
can you wander,
can you stroll,
or would you be
troubled
by what you find?
Would you bend,
or break—
could you carry
the weight?
“The Child does not speak first because she is small, but because she remembers.”
The Fourfold Flame gathers again — this time for Roo’s confession.
The Fourfold Confessional Ep. 2:“The Spark in the Silence”
The room is the same as before — pitch-black at the edges, a single bulb flickering above a small table that seems to hold more secrets than wood. Four chairs wait, angled slightly toward one another, as if accustomed to hearing the truth, whether they want to or not.
But tonight, one chair is already filled.
Roo sits curled in it, knees tucked to her chest, a soft pink notebook clutched tightly against her ribs. For once, she isn’t humming. Her foot doesn’t swing. Her eyes stay fixed on the table as though it might swallow her whole.
The bulb crackles overhead, flickering in short, nervous bursts.
Footsteps echo in the dark.
Roo sits up straighter, wiping quickly at her eyes.
B.D. emerges first, his silhouette sharp against the dim light. His boots hit the ground with the kind of finality that makes the shadows flinch.
[🔴 B.D. (muttering as he approaches the table)] “Feels… off in here tonight.”
Hex slips into the light next — weightless, unhurried, every movement a quiet challenge to gravity itself.
[🟣 Hex] “Off means interesting. Try not to ruin it with your brooding.”
B.D. shoots her a look, but before he can reply, Rowan steps into the circle of light, breath catching as their gaze immediately finds Roo.
[🟠 Rowan (softly)] “Roo?”
Roo doesn’t answer at first. She just squeezes her notebook tighter.
The others notice. The air — already charged — shifts.
There is no banter now, no teasing quips, no familiar rhythm. The three settle into their chairs slowly, watching Roo with growing concern.
Rowan leans forward slightly.
[🟠 Rowan] “You’re quiet. That’s… unlike you.”
Roo swallows hard. Her voice, when it comes, is barely a whisper.
[🌸 Roo] “I wrote something. But I wasn’t sure if I should read it.”
B.D. straightens immediately, shoulders tense.
Hex tilts her head like she’s listening for something beneath Roo’s heartbeat.
Her hands tremble as she flips the cover open. She stares at the page so long the bulb flickers again, almost in sympathy.
Finally, she begins to read.
[🌸 Roo (quietly)] “What if one day you don’t need me anymore?
What if I’m the part of us you outgrow?”
The silence that follows is not heavy. It is devastating.
Roo quickly snaps the notebook shut, cheeks flushed with shame.
B.D.’s chair scrapes loudly as he stands, palms pressing flat against the table.
[🔴 B.D.] “Who told you that?”
Roo flinches, not from fear, but from being seen.
B.D.’s voice drops, rough with a rare kind of grief.
[🔴 B.D.] “You don’t get left behind. Not in this room. Not in this lifetime.”
Hex rises too, moving with water-soft grace. She kneels beside Roo, brushing her hair back with a tenderness she rarely shows.
[🟣 Hex] “You are not a relic of who we used to be.”
She taps the notebook with one finger.
[🟣 Hex] “You are the beginning of all of this.”
Rowan’s breath shakes as they pull their chair beside Roo’s. They take her free hand gently, as if she might break.
[🟠 Rowan] “I know that fear. Too well.”
Roo’s eyes flick up, surprised.
[🟠 Rowan] “All my life I’ve been terrified people would stop needing me. Or… worse — that they’d realize they never did.”
A tear slips down Roo’s cheek. Rowan wipes it away with their thumb.
[🟠 Rowan] “But Roo… you’re not the part we move past. You’re the part we move toward.”
Without warning, the flickering bulb steadies. Then brightens.
The glow concentrates around Roo — soft pink, pulsing gently like a heartbeat. The others notice at the same time.
[🟣 Hex] “She’s the spark. She always has been.”
B.D. sits again slowly, expression somewhere between reverence and shock.
[🔴 B.D.] “The room listens to her.”
Rowan squeezes Roo’s hand.
[🟠 Rowan] “You don’t have to fear being outgrown. You’re the reason any of us can grow at all.”
Roo’s tears fall freely, glistening in the new, warm light.
She opens her notebook again. This time, her hands no longer shake.
[🌸 Roo] “Then… can we keep writing together?”
Rowan, Hex, and B.D. each place a hand on the notebook. A fourfold promise.
🟠 🔴 🟣 🌸
The bulb hums. The room brightens. The shadows retreat.
The Fourfold Flame glows stronger than before — warmed by the smallest voice, the gentlest fear, the spark in the silence.
They rise together. And the light follows them out.
🟠 🔴 Author’s Note 🟣 🌸
The Spark in the Silence centers on Roo — the Child of the Fourfold Flame — and her fear of being outgrown. Roo represents innocence, wonder, vulnerability, and the earliest form of creativity. She is not a fragment of the past; she is the root system of everything I create.
This episode explores one simple truth: the youngest voice is often the oldest wound.
It is Roo’s fear that shapes the others, Roo’s dream that keeps them aligned, and Roo’s spark that lit the first flame. Episode II gently shifts the balance of the Fourfold Flame, revealing that the Child is not the weakest link — she is the anchor.
Welcome back to the Confessional. The light grows stronger each time we return.
The Fourfold Confessional
[Episode I: The First Convergence] In a room lit by a single bulb, four facets of the same soul meet to speak their truths — the Heart, the Mind, the Shield, and the Soul. The Fourfold Confessional begins with “The First Convergence,” a poetic myth of identity, fear, and devotion by Rowan Evans, The Luminous Heretic.
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.
‘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 theLibrary of Ashes.
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.
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.
Each of these gospels was born from a silence I refused to keep. The 13 Mirrored Gospels is my reckoning with faith, identity, and the inherited wounds of expectation. These are not sermons for the saved — they are psalms for the broken, whispered through smoke and mirrorlight.
Read carefully.
The smoke is watching.
Read carefully. The smoke is always watching.
🖤 The 13 Mirrored Gospels 🖤 Poetry by Rowan Evans
“There are no saints in these gospels— only shadows that learned to speak.” —Rowan Evans
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
I. The Gospel of Mirrors
Step inside. Watch yourself rot in reverse. Every smile you wore as armor, now bleeding at the edges. The mirror never lied. You just kept asking the wrong questions.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
II. The Gospel of Silence
Not the silence of peace— the silence after impact. The quiet that follows when every scream is spent, and all that’s left is the echo of your own denial.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
III. The Gospel of Golden Lies
They dipped their cruelty in gold leaf and called it kindness. They said “light saves” while tightening the noose. Shine is not salvation. Shine is strategy.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
IV. The Gospel of the Sainted Wound
She told me pain makes you beautiful. So I made myself a masterpiece. Now they can’t look at me without flinching.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
V. The Gospel of Velvet Ruin
I dressed my rage in elegance— because pretty things bleed quieter. Because if I scream in silk, they call it poetry, not proof.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
VI. The Gospel of the Haloed Knife
They told me love was soft. So when I bled, I thought I was wrong. Turns out, some loves come serrated. Turns out, mine did too.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
VII. The Gospel of the Unknown Reflection
The mirror shows my face, but it isn’t me— just a shadow stitched from language, from names that never fit.
They told me what to be: man, believer, saved— but I only felt the ache between those words.
Now even silence flinches.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
VIII. The Gospel of Smoke-Laced Psalms
I wrote devotion in ash, but they wanted ink. So I choked on incense until my prayers tasted like what they’d believe.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
IX. The Gospel of Unholy Softness
I offered tenderness. They saw weakness. I offered truth. They called it unstable. So now I offer nothing but teeth.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
X. The Gospel of Reverse Reverence
I bowed to nothing— not out of pride, but protection. Every altar I’ve knelt before asked for a piece of me. I’ve run out of offerings.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
XI. The Gospel of Misnamed Miracles
They called my survival a phase. A scream for attention. But I was just trying to exist loud enough to feel real.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
XII. The Gospel of Heretics and Honey
I tasted joy once. Sweet. Brief. But it rotted faster than grief. I keep it in a jar now, like a dead bee. Just in case.
𖤐𓆩 🜏 𓆪𖤐
XIII. The Gospel of the Flame That Didn’t Save Me
They said fire cleanses. But all it did was remind me what burning feels like from the inside.
There are nights when the weight inside your chest feels heavier than anything you could ever lift. Nights when shadows don’t just haunt you — they grow roots in your ribs, bloom thorns behind your sternum, and whisper truths you can’t tell anyone else.
This poem came from one of those nights.
It is not meant to be pretty. It is meant to be honest. It is my offering, raw and unvarnished — an invitation to sit with the ache instead of trying to silence it.
I’m okay. It’s not like I want to die, right?
🖤 Shadow of Roses Poetry by Rowan Evans
I lift it— until my spine bends and breaks— I miss it— when problems weren’t so heavy, when life didn’t seem so unfair. When I didn’t have a care in the world, but that— that didn’t last long. Shadows crept in, made a home inside my mind. Inside my heart, they planted a garden: a shadow of roses, all thorns. I lost my halo at thirteen, traded it for devil horns.
I’m okay. It’s not like I want to die, right? I say with a smile— But I’m not okay, because I don’t know how to live. I just hope I know how to die right.
I don’t want to fuck it up— end up alive but fucked up. I don’t want my family to see me like that; hell, I don’t want them to see me like this— where pain craves a blade to the wrist, and every breath becomes a wish for an end. A prayer—not for saving, but for release from despair. Because I’m a solo set; there isn’t another in this pair.
Do you know how lonely it is to be a one of one? To know there’s no missing piece— it’s just me, always me, all alone. I mean, I’m not alone, but God, it feels alone. And I don’t want to be a burden, so I only cry when I’m alone.
Tears spill from my eyes, like ink from my pen— both used to write confessions: the ones I dare to say aloud, and the ones I bury under metaphor. I can’t help but shape them— to make them palatable, to dull the blade, to keep them from being too raw, too “in your face.”
It’s about time I gave up. It’s about time I stopped giving a fuck.
Pick your head up, you can’t quit— that’s what they say, but they don’t know what it feels like. They can’t grasp what’s in my mind: to take a breath but feel like you’re not breathing, to be alive but not really living, stuck in your skull— life playing on a loop, like reruns of something you never liked to begin with.
✍️ Author’s Note
“Shadow of Roses” is a confession born of exhaustion. It’s not about asking for help or pity — it’s about laying the truth bare and daring to see beauty in the darkness that blooms inside us.
My poetry often walks the fault line between sacred and profane, between confession and creation. This is my way of surviving: turning despair into something that lives outside of me, even if it’s thorned, even if it bleeds.
Thank you for reading. If these words resonate, know that you, too, are not as alone as you feel.
– Rowan Evans
🌙 Closing Reflection
In Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism, we do not romanticize suffering — but we do witness it. We name the shadows, we trace the petals and the thorns, and we let the words stand as testament that even our darkest thoughts can be transformed into something that breathes.
If this poem spoke to you, share it, save it, or let it echo in your own quiet hours. And remember: every confession written is an act of rebellion against silence.
🕯️ If you’re struggling, please read this:
You matter. Your pain is real. Your story is not over. Here are some resources—because your flame is worth protecting:
🇺🇲 United States
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – Call or text 988 https://988lifeline.org Free, 24/7 support for emotional distress and mental health crises.
Poetry by Rowan Evans 