Tag: loss
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Drought Town
This is the summer of red dust. Everything sucked dry—hollow as cicada husks, wedged under eaves and porch stairs—waiting for a wind change. On the road out of town, empty grain silos loom, perched like headstones over wheat-field graves. Harvesters sag, tyres cracked like the asphalt. Rotting carcasses litter riverless beds—tongues swollen, flyblown, unslaked. First,…
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Tōrō Nagashi
Your flame flickers briefly— a parting whisper. Some trick of the river mimics your laughter. We stand apart at sunset, lost in natsukashii, come together in darkness, to watch the dead pass on. Your light has fallen now to shadow beneath the bridge. Ryan Stone First published on Napalm and Novocain, January 2016 Published at Poetry…
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Pulling Back the Sheet
It started as a scribble in my yearbook and ended with an apology, of sorts: I wish I’d been more, held your hand when it mattered and even when it didn’t. Ink lasts longer than schoolyard dreams, wilted before their bloom. Notes we wrote lend breath to ghosts, long after pens fall still. In this…
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Adrift
The last leaves are golden, most have already flown. Branches hang bare beneath ashen skies. Not so different from when you climbed, hand over slow hand, waging a war inside your young mind. One leaf breaks free, hangs on a moment, before leaping into the maelstrom. I imagine a short fall, sharp jerk and silence;…
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The Weight
One drunken night, he lay on the coach road and she lay beside him. He pictured a truck descending–wobbling around corners, gaining momentum. They spoke about crushes, first kisses. He told her of an older woman who’d stolen a thing he couldn’t replace. He tried to describe the weight of lost things. She listened until…
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Old Photograph
In the photo I keep in my wallet you’re smiling. No hint of ghosts in the glint of your eye. You’re sitting on a riverbank weaving a daisy chain I wore until it crumbled– linking flower to flower with the unblemished certainty that beauty and vows are forever. Ryan Stone
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Irish Fire
My grandmother called it Irish fire, said it raged through my father hotter than Beli Mawr’s bum. She was long dead when it finally flared fiercer than he could contain. The embers of his eyes scorched childhood’s last leaves to ash, left them smoldering. Ryan Stone
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Dog Days
There’s a lot going on in the world today. My TV stays off for sanity’s sake. Another school. Child. Innocent. Betrayal. And fear, like a flag hanging over it all. When sorrow engulfs me, I almost feel guilty– how does an old paw print eclipse any of that? But my sphere spins slowly, the breeze…
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Breaking Point
Pa, I see you in your shed– unaware of dusk settling over your garden, painting your pink crabapple blossoms grey. I see you bend, to squint at some small imperfection marring the wooden soldier you’ve spent the whole day carving, hands slow-dancing to a tune no-one else can hear. Later Ma will shake her head,…
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