The Stack

Miss Carr was the strict one—
hair wired tight,
skirts to the shin,
a voice of rules
and overdue fines.

The library breathed her name.
Quiet, please.
Return on time.
Hands to yourself.

I once saw her shush the deputy principal,
and he apologised.

We said she slept in the archives,
alphabetised her dreams,
quietened ghosts for sport.

She didn’t see me—
tucked in Fiction,
in the hush between Neruda
and Nietzsche.

As she reached for a book,
her blouse rode up—
bare skin,
lace black as ink,
the kind of secret
you never give back.

Then jazz—
low and slow—
slipped out like sin,
swirling with smoke
and memory.

She swayed,
hips in slow orbit—
a moon
shedding gravity.

I held my breath.
Watched her eyes close,
her mouth curve—
not a smile,
something primal
and wild.

She looked like someone
who once belonged
and wasn’t sure
if she missed it.

She smoothed her blouse,
buttoned calm back into place,
and turned off the music
without looking my way.

But as she passed,
she paused—

“Alphabetical,”
whispered
soft as dusk.

Ryan Stone

May 11, 2025 7

Red Wagon

I pulled my dog through summers,
tongue lolling in the heat,
ears twitching at bees
and things only he could hear.

The wagon rattled like laughter
over cracked footpaths,
and I—captain of that small red ship—
knew no world beyond
the corner store
and the shade beneath our tree.

It was enough.

Now I carry more—
keys, deadlines, debt,
the ache of wanting
what I used to have
before I learned to want.

My wagon rusts in a shed somewhere,
still red beneath the dust,
still waiting
for a child who doesn’t need more.

Ryan Stone

May 10, 2025 10

Letter to My Sons

Boys,

When the fire comes—and it will—don’t run.
Stand your ground. Feel the heat. Know what’s worth burning.
Not everything you carry needs to be saved.

You’ll be told to move fast, talk loud, win more.
Don’t listen to that.
The quiet men are the ones you want near when things fall apart.

If your hands shake, that’s fine.
So did mine.
Do the work anyway.

Let yourself be broken by love at least once.
If you’re lucky, it’ll teach you where you end and someone else begins.
But leave them space. Don’t take what isn’t offered. Ever.

When loss comes, don’t try to beat it.
Feel it. Let it hollow you out clean.
Then build something inside the space it left.

The world will try to make you hard.
Let it make you solid instead.
Be unmovable when it counts.
But stay soft in the places that matter—your hands, your eyes, your heart.

People will try to name you.
Let your actions do it first.

Carry stories.
Especially ones that don’t paint you as the hero.
And remember: pain handled right becomes a kind of map.

Look out for each other.
That’s not advice, that’s bedrock,
even when you disagree, especially when you don’t speak.
You’ve always got each other’s back. That’s blood. That’s the deal.

And when no one notices you did the right thing—
good.
That means you’re growing into your name.

I’ll see you on the ridge.
Love,
Dad

May 9, 2025 10

Magpie Morning

Fifty soon.
Strange how that number
feels both heavier and lighter
than expected.

I wake before the house stirs.
Kettle on.
Dogs at my heel—
the old one careful on the tiles,
the young one waiting for the day
like it might break open just for her.

A magpie sings on the powerline,
low and fluted—
not calling,
not warning—
just there.
Like me.

The track behind is long,
marked with all the right things:
mud, fire,
boys with scraped knees and full bellies,
a wife who still sees me
when I go quiet.

The years haven’t made me wise,
but they’ve made me slower to speak,
and better at listening—
especially to my sons,
who keep handing me pieces of myself
I didn’t know I’d dropped.

There is more life to come.
I can feel it humming in the floorboards.
Not louder—
just steadier.

And if this is the halfway mark,
it’s a fine place to pause.
To stand with the sun
not at my back
or in my eyes,
but warming my chest.

The magpie sings again.
Not a beginning,
not an ending—
just the middle of a good song
I still get to hear.

Ryan Stone

May 9, 2025 12

The Weight of Lost Things

Friends, a quiet note to say my first poetry collection is now out in the world.
The Weight of Lost Things gathers the red-dust roads, dogs, and crows that have followed me for years and sets them loose on the page.

If you’d like to read along, you can find the book here:

👉 The Weight of Lost Things – Amazon AU

Thanks for walking this road with me.

— Ryan

Set against the dry pulse of the Australian outback, these poems chart the fractured terrain of boyhood, brutality, young love, and the loyalty of dogs. Fathers vanish, mothers soften, dogs die, and the land never forgives. With language as lean as the paddocks it describes, this book explores what gets buried, what remains unspoken, and the quiet ache of staying when there’s nowhere left to go.

April 30, 2025 15

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

April 23, 2025 28

Coal Town

Birds don’t stop in this town.
I see them fly past, black peppering
blue, going someplace. I’ve given up
dreaming wings. This town
will know my bones. Condoms
sell well in Joe’s corner store – boredom breeds
but breeding’s a trap, a twitch in the smile
of those steel-eyed shrews
who linger late after church.
I walked half a day, out past the salt flats,
after they closed the movie house down. Smoked
the joint she’d brought back from college
when she returned to bury my dad.
I remember how pale her fingers lay
across my father’s hands –
coal miner’s hands, tarred like his lungs;
like this town.

Ryan Stone

First published in Eunoia Review, July 2016.

Winner of the Goodreads Monthly Poetry Contest, August 2016.

First Place in Poetry Nook contest 101, November 2016.