Some memories fold themselves into silence,
others take flight in small, fragile ways.
This one is for my nan.
Paper Wings
Some memories fold themselves into silence,
others take flight in small, fragile ways.
This one is for my nan.
Some memories fold themselves into silence,
others take flight in small, fragile ways.
This one is for my nan.
Infinite
I have carried both halves for all these years.
What would you do with a love that never ended?
Walking Bare
I wasn’t made
for straight roads.
My bones remember
bare earth,
the breath before
the leap.
We walk stiff now—
feet wrapped in slaughter
and stolen skin.
Even the ground
pulls away.
But some nights
when the house forgets
to hum,
I move softer—
past walls,
past memory,
into a place
where trees
still whisper.
And for a moment,
I sense them—
my fur and blood,
the wild hunt.
In the back of my throat
a howl rises.
Ryan Stone
Paw Print
Years since—
his bowl gone,
yard grown over,
collar hanging
unused.
This morning,
cleaning the window,
I found it—
one print,
low in the corner,
half lost to light.
It floored me.
Solid.
Sure.
The weight of him
in a single mark.
I stood
cloth in hand,
his breath
suddenly in the room.
Didn’t wipe it.
Didn’t move.
Just watched
as the sun warmed the glass
and brought him
loping back
through the yard
and the years.
Ryan Stone
Tearing Sunshine
Mum moves like rinse water—
warm, grey,
going where she’s poured.
Hands red-raw
from bleach and bones
she can’t scrub clean.
She hums when she’s bone-tired,
not for tune,
just to keep from cracking.
Dad says work is hard—
but only ever sits,
rail grease on his boots,
beer in hand,
trophy beside him:
Highest Goal Scorer,
1983.
He holds it like a wound
that never scabbed.
Says he could’ve been something
if Mum hadn’t—
if I hadn’t—
Doesn’t say the rest.
He just drinks.
Then one day—
a yellow dress.
Hand-me-down.
Sunlight sewn into thread.
Mum steps into the yard
like she’s forgotten
someone might be watching.
Strips to the greying cotton of her
and pulls the yellow on—
slow, soft,
like trying on a life
that didn’t happen.
She twirls once.
Eyes closed.
A ghost of a girl
smiling through the cracks.
Then boots.
The back door slams.
Slut
In a voice like wire.
The dress tears in two directions—
fabric, then her.
She clutches the scraps
to the parts of her
he once loved.
And shrinks.
That night—
beer cans breathing,
trophy glinting
under weak kitchen light.
He slumps.
Mouth open.
Gone.
I take the trophy,
glass warm from his hand.
Step barefoot through bindii
to the path.
Raise it.
It catches moonlight
for a second.
Then gone.
The sound is clean.
I lay the shattered pieces by his chair,
like they fell
when he groped
for the past
and missed.
Ryan Stone
First Smoke
I lit it behind the shed
with a match I struck on the tin—
my thumb raw from trying.
The cigarette trembled
between fingers that still knew
Lego and scraped knees.
I didn’t cough.
Didn’t blink.
Just held the burn in
like I was keeping a secret
only smoke could understand.
The dog watched,
head tilted,
like he knew I’d crossed
into something I couldn’t uncross.
By the time Mum called for tea,
my breath was fire and hush,
and I’d decided
not to be a boy anymore.
Ryan Stone
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
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
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
days of stone 