Show Me
What I Learned Today
Loss recalibrates what matters. If something’s on your heart tonight, let it out.
Exuvia
Change is never clean.
Something always cracks—
in the world,
in the light,
in us.
Exuvia — from the Latin for “things stripped away.”
Storm Warning
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
To the Man I Might’ve Been
You never made it out of the early days.
I see your face sometimes in the mirror—same jaw,
but your eyes aren’t tired yet.
You had plans.
Straight lines and clean hands.
You really thought grit alone would get you through.
I admire that.
Even now.
There were forks you didn’t see,
roads I walked instead.
Some of them cost more than they were worth.
Others saved me
by breaking me first.
I held your name like a knife for a while.
Cut a few people.
Cut myself more.
There was a woman you would’ve loved
and left.
I stayed.
She left anyway.
That one still stings.
There’s a boy now
who calls me Dad.
He wouldn’t know you,
but I think you’d like him.
He’s gentler than we ever were
and stronger for it.
You’d hate how slow I’ve gotten.
How quiet.
How long I sit before answering.
But I’m still here.
Wiser, maybe.
Definitely more scarred.
Sometimes I wonder what you’d think of me.
Not sure you’d be proud,
but I think you’d understand.
You burned bright.
I burn low,
but steady.
You chased light.
I learned to live in shadow.
All the Birds are Gone
The sky doesn’t hum like it used to.
We traded songs
for signal towers
and forgot the sound
of wings over wheat.
Benches sit empty
in parks built for someone else’s childhood.
Swings move only with the wind now,
no laughter to push them.
We speak in pings
and half-hearted hearts,
thumb-pressed love
and silence that scrolls on
longer than grief.
We taught our children
to fear the quiet
but not to cherish it.
We gave them passwords
instead of prayers.
And still,
the earth waits.
Somewhere,
a fox curls beneath a rusted fence,
a girl cups a candle like a secret,
and the wind remembers
how to sing.
Ryan Stone
days of stone 