A Letter I’ll Never Send

(Prayer of the Heartbroken Heretic)
Poetry by Rowan Evans

✦ Invocation ✦

Read this not as accusation, but as offering.
A prayer whispered by a heart still trembling,
written not to hold you close,
but to keep my tenderness from turning to stone.

This is not a chain.
This is the soft gospel of what remains
after hope has burned away—
and love still kneels, unrepentant,
in the ruin.

My dear—

If these words ever find you,
know they were never meant to chain you.
I only wanted to love you,
even if my name fades from your midnight prayers.

If laughter keeps you warm,
even if I am nowhere near to hear it—
may it spill from you like dawn breaking over ash.

But if there’s mercy left for a fool who loved too openly,
let me stay beside you, even if only as a soft shadow.
Let me remain—not as what could have been,
but as what still is:
a witness, a shelter, a friend.

If you drift away,
may it be gentle—
and may it never teach me to regret
the softness I offered so freely.

Teach me how to bless your joy,
even when it blooms in soil I cannot touch.
Teach me to carry this ache as devotion,
not as bitterness.

If my heart must break,
let it break open, not closed.
Let me remain unrepentant
in the way I loved you—quietly, fiercely,
without demand.

And if nothing else remains,
know this:
loving you was never my ruin.
It was my prayer, my litany,
my small rebellion against the cold.

Always,
and still—
Amen.

✦ Benediction ✦

Go gently, even in absence.
May the ache remain soft, not sharp;
the memory remain blessing, not curse.

And if your own heart ever trembles
under the weight of unspoken devotion,
may you remember this:

Love freely, ’cause love given is never wasted—
and even unreturned prayers
still rise like incense
into the quiet night.

Check out more poetry in The Library of Ashes!