by Pauline Lacanilao Arnould
Even the puddles
of light collecting under the gum trees
were dulled by the dust of our scattering.
In silence, we stiffened against each cliffside
bend, until there were no more.
On a pathway wide
enough for two
we cut through the bell-song of birds
we couldn’t see. Everything
was bark or twig or sand.
Then suddenly, everything was ocean.
My love, I refuse
to tarnish what happened there
with words.
But I will say this:
A month later, you swam
your fingers into mine
from the far end of that bright blue
couch, and eyes
closed, uncrumpled my breathing
with a movement deeper than movement.
I asked you what you were thinking about.
You said, us, in the ocean.
Pauline Lacanilao Arnould: This poem was written somewhere between a coastal Australian road trip that culminated in a marriage proposal—catapulting me into the anxieties of migration and the labyrinth of long-distance wedding planning—and the disorienting end of the relationship, delivered to me over the phone while I was back home in the Philippines, completing my studies six months later. In the days before leaving Melbourne for Manila, I had frantically scrawled down this cherished memory and tucked it beneath my partner’s side of the mattress—an anchor of devotion, I imagined, as I reached for him across seas and seasons. An artefact of our story en route to forever, I told myself. Years later, having gratefully arrived at a different future, I look back at this poem and think of the miles of dust we traversed on that road trip. The memory remains precious in many ways. Yet the fact that such an arid journey still led us to the ocean carries an entirely new meaning for me now.
Published: Sunday 9 March 2025
Pauline Lacanilao Arnould is a Filipino writer whose sense of being “en route” is shaped by a life spent moving between homes in Greece, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Australia, and Belgium. Her poetry has appeared in Sustaining the Archipelago: An Anthology of Philippine Ecopoetry, Alchemy: A Journal of Translation, Kritika Kultura, The Journal of English Studies and Comparative Literature, TLDTD, and Women’s Voices for Change. She resides in Tacloban City, Leyte—for now.