too much coffee, too little sleep, a love of words…
You will never fall in love with me.
Don’t try to convince me
That I will always wait for you.
If you really look, you’ll see
I’m not here for the long haul
Don’t imagine
You give me reason to stay.
When things get hard I’ll leave –
Don’t imagine
I’m not like the others,
Goodbye.
I’ll never say
I love you.
(Now read from bottom to top)
Ryan Stone
It was once the centre of things—
a sun that gave names to shadows,
that warmed the bones of planets
and made time possible.
Now it glows
like memory does—
dim,
but refusing to go out.
There is no explosion.
No final flare.
Only the slow retreat
of light
into ash.
It will cool for billions of years.
Long after the Earth forgets itself,
long after we’ve stopped asking,
this ember will linger—
silent,
alone,
perfect in its endurance.
Not everything beautiful needs an audience.
Some things are simply
what the end looks like
when it takes its time.
Ryan Stone
Wonder Box: White Dwarfs
When a star like our Sun dies, it sheds its outer layers and leaves behind a core—a white dwarf. No longer powered by fusion, it shines only with leftover heat. Over trillions of years, it will cool into a black dwarf: cold, dark, and undetectable. None exist yet. The universe isn’t old enough.
This post is taken directly from my latest poetry chapbook – The Sky Well Fell Through – published this week on Amazon
for the ones who sing into silence
Somewhere below the shimmer line
where light forgets itself,
a whale turns slow in a cathedral of salt—
each scar on her skin
a stanza.
She sings,
not to summon,
not to find—
but to remember.
A song older than shipwrecks.
Older than ropes and sails.
The deep drinks it.
Holds it like breath.
Lets it echo
along trenches where no eyes go,
only ghosts
and pressure
and time without hands.
We used to think it was a beacon,
a call to others.
But not all songs seek ears.
Some are memory
made into sound—
just one creature
telling the dark:
I was here.
Ryan Stone
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
Some nights,
when the wind shifts
and the silence settles deep,
I step out barefoot
onto the cold veranda.
Above the gum trees—
the Southern Cross,
low and steady,
like it’s waiting for me
to notice.
It doesn’t blaze,
just holds its shape,
a quiet thing
pointing the way
I’ve always known
but needed to remember.
Not a map.
Not a promise.
Just a reminder
that home
isn’t something you reach—
it’s the walking,
the choosing,
the light you carry
when the dark won’t lift.
Ryan Stone
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
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
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.
Sometimes she’s wildfire, burning through the night;
some days she’s a winter storm, ice and fury unleashed.
Sometimes she’s a shadow, neither fully here or really there;
some days she’s untamable, wild as rolling seas.
Sometimes I hold her close, as the world starts coming undone;
some days we fit together and I feel that I belong.
Ryan Stone
And these are my failings:
a wild smile always leads my mind
to the kiss hiding behind it
and sometimes to plot
the shortest route there.
Did I say sometimes? I lie a bit, too.
And I tend to zone out to small-talk –
there are enough idle words
in the world.
And I can’t warm to people,
despite how I try.
I’m lying again – I don’t try at all.
I’d much rather hide
with Lana Del Rey,
alone in the dark
drinking vodka,
ignoring that night
in my fourteenth year
when my father got drunk,
made me drive his ute home –
the soft bump and loud bark,
the crimson accusation,
coagulating on his tyre
next morning.
Ryan Stone
Written for National Poetry Month 2016 @ The Music In It – Failures
First published in Poppy Road Review, May 2016.
days of stone 