you left before the bell

we were sixteen,
all collarbones and restless hands,
kicking gravel behind the bike sheds
like we knew the world owed us something
and we weren’t afraid to ask for it.

your name lived in my throat
for years after
like a word I never learned to say
out loud.

we never got a proper ending—
just a Tuesday
and a late note
and a sudden
silence.

I still remember the smell of your school shirt—
faint perfume, pencil shavings,
a crushed eucalyptus leaf you kept
in your pocket for luck.
(you said your Nonna told you it kept snakes away.
I said I didn’t believe in that.
I lied.)

I’ve loved since.
proper loves.
wild, bruising, grown-up ones.
but none that remembered the way
I drew hearts in the margins
of science notes
and spelled your name wrong
just to be careful.

you were the ache
before I had words for aching.
the door left slightly ajar
in every room I ever left.

I saw someone who looked like you
last week—
older, tired,
still a little
wild in the jaw.
my chest folded in on itself
like a paper crane.

I didn’t stop.
I didn’t speak.
some memories
aren’t meant to be
put back
into real time.

but still—
on certain dusks,
when the light’s low
and the wind comes in smelling
like warm bitumen and chalk—
I think of you.

and the bell
that never rang.

Ryan Stone