Island to Island

Island to Island

• Adil Hafezji Althea Poserio
• Elijah Brown
• Jeff David
• Linnae Abraham
• Milliscent Lucio
• Nene Cadiog
• Rayaan Kassim
• Rhanydell Bien Baysa
• Rimmuel Fanasan
• Shreya Mishra
• Facilitators and Editors
• Ella Otomewo
• Padmapani Perez
• Special Guest Facilitators
• Heather Ann Pulido
• Zena Edwards
• Producers
• Billie Meredith
• Padmapani Perez
• Nicole May
• Zine Production
• Jennifer Patricia A. Cariño
• Video Production

Ricardo Saggitta

Copyright 2026 of each work and photograph is held by the author or photographer. All rights reserved.

The Island to Island workshops were conceived through the collaboration of Mt Cloud Bookshop (PH) and Young Identity (UK). Island to Island was supported by the British Council's Connections Through Culture programme.

• BRITISH COUNCIL
• OUNG
• Y "DENTI mt cloud
• BOOKSHOP

Island to Island

• Introduction
• Rimmuel Fanasan
• Tahanan...........
• The Forest Writes Me Back...
• murky..
• Shreya Mishra ............
• Namma Nagar
• Ancestral Nomads.
• The Cost of Colonisation
• Jeff David.......
• To-Do List:............
• In the eyes...……………………….
• Rayaan Kassim .............
• The Living Land Malaay.
• The rain that falls
• Althea Poserio
• Submerged
• Andidits.........
• If the Creek Can Speak
• Elijah Brown........
• Root of Evil................
• Saving Rye Bank Fields

Empty Deeplook - A response to Rayaan Kassim

• Vp. 8
• 67220p. 16
• .. 17p. 21
• .22p. 23
• 2222p. 26
• .28p. 29

• Milliscent Lucio..
• The Earth Goes To A Salon
• A Sip of Home.
• Urban Playground...............
• Linnae Abraham..........
• My land of dreams.
• Tanaga

It's not easy for a toe today.

Rhanydell Bien Baysa.

Return to Kalinga..

Critical Clues on Navigating the Baguio City Public Market………………

• Trees............
• Adil Hafezji
• Nene Cadiog..
• where mama is, that is home
• The Vegetable Gardener

The Word for Soil is Never Just One Word iii

Two cities on two distant islands, a literature and performance arts charity, an independent bookshop, six Thursdays of writing and conversation and eleven amazing young poets. Island to Island was a unique digital cultural exchange spearheaded by the women behind Young Identity in Manchester and Mt Cloud Bookshop in Baguio City. Island to Island convened online conversations and writing sessions on climate change, resilience and poetry. The eleven participants who showed up in the zoom meetings for Island to Island (afternoons in the UK, evenings in the Philippines) enriched one another's understanding of the polycrisis and how we are to live in these times. They brought their hearts, minds and histories to bear on questions of home, place, belonging, loss and the state of the planet.

The zine you are holding in your hands (or reading on a screen) is the written culmination of those magical Thursday meetings. Beyond these pages, eleven young poets hold memories of one another and of online encounters in which each participant was a window into the land, water, beings, communities and islands that hold each one and everyone.

Island to Island

Tahanan home.

it taste like broth in a rainy saturday afternoon. it's where my sorrows dissolve all tears turn to laughter home is a feeling a sanctuary as tender as when my mom's voice sing softly, lovingly: ‘tahan na Rimmuel Fanasan

• ABOUT THE PHOTO
• The morning view outside my window
• Bannawag = sunrise
• Rimmuel Fanasan

In a crumpled paper

I wrote a letter to the forest

He gave me a mirror

I saw all entropic strands In my brain

• UNTANGLED
• Rimmuel Fanasan
• Island to Island

murky i walked past the bridge.

that rusted old metal companion to passerby. the stench of oxidized metal, grew stronger at its mid i saw the waters, blue in the afternoon sun, shining, shining, shining the egrets feeding in the current i went down-to the riverbank, camera in hand, ready to freeze their dance- their white feathers in a composition i longed to claim when i arrived, i saw:

the water was no blue, but a weary murky green, its banks littered with plastics disguised in the sky's reflection

Rimmuel Fanasan

when i arrived, i saw:

it was not dance they did, but egrets dodging the trash that drifted downstream when i arrived, i saw:

not the bridge that's decaying, not the iron foul, but the waterthat sorrowful murky water when i arrived, i saw:

the crimes, the quiet crimes and the guilt that clang to everything... was ours, only oursand our murky conscience

Rimmuel Fanasan

Island to Island

Shreya Mishra

The lakes of Bangalore, Once overflowing with biodiversity;

Supplied freshwater to the homes that stood its banks. Lush greenery covered the city. The air was pure, Filling our bodies with the scent of damp soils. The city of lakes, we called it once

Today my home stands on it. Covered with soil to build urban communities, curving roads leading to malls, restaurants, cafes. The air foggy and burnt. Charring all our lungs, forming a film of dust everywhere.

Alas, The Silicon Valley of India now.

Shreya Mishra

Island to Island

• My family comes from fertile land
• Harvesting mangoes, toiling under the sun
• Rearing cattle for milk

Standing by the lakes, waiting to catch a bounty of fish.

My grandfather left many years back

Moving papa from one state to another

Unable to call once place home.

Today we live far from 'our' ancestral home

Surrounded by rising buildings

Crammed by cars, bustling with the noise of people and animals

in the midst.

Bangalore is miles apart, but it is my home.

Shreya Mishra

Shreya Mishra

Manchester, a place I now call home was once built on the backs of my ancestors. The textile industry that grew England's wealth, once starved my great grandparents.

The white man's greed for Indigo bled the fertile soil of my land dry.

Today I pay good money to feed the lineage of hands that destroyed an ecosystem;

A place we grew rice and wheat to feed our community. Now it remained arid and empty.

The rain falls onto exposed seeds, hoping for a miracle that never came.

The cobblestones that I love to skip over, stumbling around the city, drunk and uninhibited

Stole the lives of a people simply trying to build a family. Each brick is made of tears of the farmers, ashes of their burnt bodies and dreams.

Stepped over as a means to an end.

Shreya Mishra

Island to Island

Jeff David

A thorn in the heart.

Misfortune. Calamity. Disaster.

A word that pierces roofs, tears streets apart, swallows voices with the current.

I. phonology/ drowned

/u/ for ulan [u⚫lán]

the first vowel slipped into the cracks, into the flood.

/o/ for oxygen [ók si⚫jén]

we ran out, before our mouth could finish it.

• /a/ for ayuda [a•yú⚫da]
• still pending.
• still waiting.
• Sound itself is lost.

II. morphology/grief inserted s-in-ira sorrow inserted g-in-iba demolished, destroyed t-in-angay — scattered, dragged

• The islands infix their grief
• Every prefix a wound
• Every suffix a missing body

Every word sinks

III. syntax / collapse clause (subject) - erased clause (verb) borrowed clause (object) — disappeared

Island to Island

House sank. Government arrived late. Bodies first. Words after. translation splintered → subject gone → verb floated agent arrived late Structure collapsed; meaning followed.

IV. semantics / erosion bayan nation → barangay → evacuation center memory → gone tulong speech promise absent → drowned

Even our language is a flooded archive. Even our grief is grammatical.

Even our hope has no tense.

V. etymology/resilience

Latin resilire to leap back, to rebound Filipino resilience

We were told to return

But we cannot.

Rivers do not. Houses do not. Children do not.

VI. discourse / submerged speaker: multiple listener: lost context: ongoing

• [annotation erased]
• We call.
• We shout.
• Names return as echoes...
• VII. postscript / residue
• S a k u n â
• a command to survive, to recover
• Jeff David

the dead were never pluralized only listed then lost grief had no marker no tense no clean boundary the river kept the names the soil learned the bodies the air carried what could not be buried

Jeff David we stopped counting when the numbers began to sound like rain

Island to Island

To-Do List:

Step onto grass they said was off-limits

Let children run across cement meant for order

✓ Spread a mat in the sun and declare it yours for lunch Sit on the cracked bench, balance on its stubborn spine Trace chalk lines where kids drew imaginary freedom ☐ Split mangoes and pass around smiles

✓ Listen to church bells and bird's songs collide Make a home of what others tried to keep ☑Whisper to the weeds: "Grow anywhere you please" Remember: every footstep, every spill, every laugh is a small act

Jeff David of quiet rebellion, of reclaiming our space back

Jeff David

There's something swirling in our yard, pushing trees and pulling at the shadows. It howls at our windows and makes the roof tremble.

Nanay says it'll pass, but this one keeps knocking on our house with fists made of wind, that make the daylight thin.

It fills the street with muddy water, eating our toys and soaking our books until the words slide off its pages.

The sky used to feel friendlier, and the rain used to sound like singing.

Now it falls in heavy echoes, like a prayer blown off course.

Jeff David

Island to Island

Rayaan Kassim

I'm sitting on the floor My legs pressed into my bum

My toes tingle, greedy for air

Every few minutes, I crunch them in One more minute

One more silent prayer

I breathe into my hands Feel the warmth tickle my nose In silence, stillness takes hold

I notice my hands grip my knees The tingle spreads

I keep breathing

Opening then closing my eyes My movement is slow

I unfold my legs

The tingle chases up to my hip

I stumble in the darkness

My feet bring me to stand

In this moment, moonlight arrives A direct piercing

• No warmth, just pure light
• Rayaan Kassim
• Island to Island

Malaay

Across the vast line of our sea Malaay swim freely

A groundbreaking discovery

The Gulf of Aden is a treasury

As the Malaay grow strength from their numbers Poachers and pirates satisfy their hunger

• The people cry out for help
• We can't survive on rations alone
• The longest coast
• The biggest joke
• They relinquish our malaay
• Our greatest ally

Shall we swim closer to the north

• The border is safer
• The bottom trawling jaws
• Won't reach us there

The waters we remember The sun's warmth

• The Are no longer there
• When the hunt begins
• Their hunger is violent

They cry out about their needs Leaving their souls behind.

Rayaan Kassim

Rayaan Kassim

Is blocked out of this scene This fort is impenetrable

It's made of concrete and steel

We have worker machines Grinding stone and tar

• In darkness, they lay it down
• In daylight, the road is marked
• During the cold
• The steel cements
• Cars drill into the road
• But the foundations are set

They're on their way To fish for rent

• They throw out their nets
• Make a mess
• Bring back the insides
• Toss away the heads

The skyline, out of reach People's homes, out of reach

• Your name
• The neighbours
• And that library space
• The first bridge
• That first tower
• And the summer heatwave
• The train station
• The bus stops
• And the hour-long waits
• Those days
• Rayaan Kassim
• Island to Island

Althea Poserio

We watch as the waters rise where we

SOW our dreams, as storms feast on crocodiles' greed.

The earth splits open for promises left in vain and we, the forgotten, are submerged again.

Althea Poserio

Island to Island

Dedicated to my grandfather and to Filipino farmers who lived most of their lives as slaves of the soil.

Tatang used to tell me the lives of the andidits. Born as nymphs beneath the soil's thin skin, they grew familiar with darkness and learned the virtue of waiting. Once the earth finally warms and loosens, they split the ground open and rise only to shrivel under the soil's final sentence. Seventeen years burrowed; seven weeks borrowed. The soil is a tender tyrant; it gives and takes in the same breath, as tatay used to say. It raises the andidits only to let them learn that being born is not the same as belonging; for belonging is never bestowed, only borrowed. And maybe Tatang and the andidits are not so different after all. Both are burrowed and bound, tethered to a land fenced by empires that merely changed names. Perhaps that is why they sing so fiercely in that brief moment of their lives- so the soil may remember who it once held.

• A coda. A cry.
• A stubborn reassertion that insists:
• They were here.
• They were never yours to own.

*andidit is an Ilocano term for cicadas

Althea Poserio

Althea Poserio

My banks Wrinkle like old Skin. My ripples cries In cracks, like voice's remembering the sun, the rain, and the feet that once graced вит поша that greets me.

• ALL me
• FRUSTED TINS ARE PLASTIK SKINS
• Island to Island
• Althea Poserio

Elijah Brown

Yesterday I learned what it's like to drown. Not in the movies way;

there were no rivers, no crying parents, no roaring tides or tsunamis, Hans Zimmer didn't beat out from speakers over the footage. It was silent, mostly.

You can't hear much from underwater, and most of what you see if you try to see at all is white bubbling from an attempted scream.

Two days ago, the same water that drowned me flowed from the rich man's showerhead and out of the rich man's car exhaust and fell from the rich man's lips in a rhythmic tap like a war drum.

Elijah Brown

Island to Island

I don't know many more. but...

no, wait, give me time, let me think!

I know, maybe something for the mice or the crows or the, the...

I don't want to be a road. I'm happy being a field. Please don't kill me.

Oh, it's a bird?

That grass. The long one.

That grows and has the heads that you can play Tree or Bush with. Right?

What?

But you just brought me here to learn.

Elijah Brown

Well done, darling. It's a bird. Next one, please?

Yes, darling.

Exactly. Next one, then.

Then what use are you to us? We should have broken you down months ago.

Too little too late.

We should take tarmac to you. Burn you into something useful. Do you agree, darling?

And you have learned, darling. You've learned so well.

But she's too dumb to teach you any more, so we should get rid of her now.

It's an inconvenience to have her here, anyway. She blocks off a perfect channel for a road.

Please.

I want to live.

And the birds and the mice and the grass want to live.

• I just want to live.
• Not all of them.
• Dad?

She doesn't want to be a road. Can't we leave her as a field?

Dad.

Dad I don't...

The birds, dad. You're killing the birds.

• Hear that, dad?
• Not all of them.
• Some of them don't have wings.
• Are they? Dad.
• Dad, this isn't right.
• She just wants to live, dad.
• Can't she stay as a field?
• Island to Island
• Yes, darling?
• That's not how this works, boy.
• She's useless.
• So she burns.

Well, we've learned about them now, so it doesn't matter if they want to live or not.

I've got a job to do, so go on, son. Side with your father.

Not my problem, son.

And the birds can move, can't they? They have wings.

Well, then, they're not very good at being birds then, Elijah Brown

A response to Rayaan Kassim

Net drags screaming drowning choking dying dead thing mad thing bad thing fish thing

Net drags more plastic cap unclean tap fish scale black rotting flap plastic bag T-shirt tag

Net drags again no more swordfish sharks with no fin cod caught dreaming octopus ring crab claw caught in cider can tin

• Net drags once again
• Empty
• Empty
• Empty
• Empty
• Empty
• Empty
• Elijah Brown
• Elijah Brown

Milliscent Lucio

The Earth Goes To A Salon

(Prompt from Linnae's poem - "carving away at keratin")

• We are horrible hairdressers
• We bleach her hair
• In all colors but natural

A year barely passes Then a rebond is due Ironing here to there

With all sorts of chemicals Of varying acidity

• On and on it goes
• Carving away at keratin
• A one-star review
• Won't do shit for this one.
• Milliscent Lucio
• A Sip of Home

It's easy to feel small Barely a grain of sand

In an ever-expanding world. To tumble blindly

To fall hard

To get up slow

But when bright rays paint With the clouds and the rain As the night steadily blankets I catch the sun in my cup

And drink its colorful warmth To stand among the stars

And breathe the vastness of my home.

Milliscent Lucio

Milliscent Lucio

Sidking palda on the concrete Between canals

And random holes

Sidestep here, sidestep there

Patintero on the pavement For cars too close

• And too fast
• Tatsing lata across the street
• Act nonchalant
• And very casual
• How will we grow
• If all we have
• Is an eternal playground?
• Milliscent Lucio
• Island to Island

Linnae Abraham

Even if they weren't planted here, my feet try to grip the sand as they sink until I feel the prick of my roots in the dunes. I want to be unbothered by the stabbing but I know comfort isn't deserved.

To be a part of my peoples, like the foam on the waves, to be folded in and dissipate like my Taho man with sticks of sticky treats.

Here, I live within a grid of straight lines the structure is safe, protected by its mouldy castles and ancestry.

But home, with its connected curves, is where I live with myself outside of my parents' dreams.

They sold the grid and its posterity but I do often wonder

Who would I be if moulded by curves?

Would I sell myself a dream too, like my parents, travel to find straight lines and comfort?

Linnae Abraham

Island to Island

Simple homes crumple and drift. No one's responsible, right? We can't control nature's might. Nor the money they shift.

Linnae Abraham

It's not easy for a toe today

That damn darned hole has exposed a toe! Out of its cover, unkept, an offering to the skies, a brave step is made, a sharp pain shoots up. These old dogs need a trip to the groomers!

We can finally breathe and wiggle and if you have the moolah you can get a nibble in leather strapped sandals if you please. Building the score for the Wiki Feet

It's a parade! For the deviant! For the strange! Weaving through the grass and dirt on a summer's day, flat footed, rooted, no protection,

as we step, step, step into -

WElp. Serves them right.

Linnae Abraham

Snagglestoothed toes need to remember their place.

Linnae Abraham

Rhanydell Bien Baysa

In the empire's wildest fantasies, I am a specter. I bring back the bones a sign of what?

Defiance? Having, in the stolen mountains, remembered your hunger?

Call your concrete shrines, stitch their poisons into prayers.

Mountain pass-a foe asking for one's land titletrapped waters-sealed envelope-a room full of women, unentered—lamp for the coldest and darkest of nights— door, to be locked- two Fieras howling—ten bullets for the Butbut chieftain

Your greed is something

I, too, have buried whole

Months and eclipses, year, slow as stolen lands, when it petrifies. I think you are afraid rise for silhouettes behind unbroken, me fits my throat a thunderstorm?

to be free.

Rhanydell Bien Baysa

I am familiar with, harvests in my ribs, borers of exile year after waters, and skies, slower of me― small fires I did not know I would which is no confession. Some nights, I dream of my skull pouring me into rice husks: me breathing with the orchids, me alive. Tell me, why does your flag like a noose? Why do you smell like that after The way it sometimes burns-how deep the want

I open a fistful of earth, forget to call you ukinnam― just a red rag fraying in the wind.

Rhanydell Bien Baysa

Critical Clues on Navigating the Baguio City Public Market after Adam David where there lies wideness where there lies kwa

Notes

Google Earth, imagery of the Baguio City Public Market, accessed December 12, 2025. Kwa refers to an Ilocano placeholder.

where there lie jeepneys

Tingi is the Filipino word for retail.

where there lies tingi

Ukay is the Filipino word for surplus or secondhand items (mostly clothing).

Wagwag is the Ilocano word for sift through.

Pasalubong is the Filipino word for travel souvenirs.

Tapuey refers to a fermented rice wine unique to the Cordillera.

Komboy refers to individuals who use carts or some ingenious handmade mechanism to transport produce from the farmland to the vendors' stalls and move produce from the vendors' stalls to the buyers' vehicles.

Rhanydell Bien Baysa

Island to Island

Trees

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.

-Kahlil Gibran

I ished like my moth stly lines, heavy as sm Flawed, dark green trian rulean sea at the lower half of yellow quarter of per right corner. The all I wished to know on un I wept and I sobbed and I wailed tine smell mixed with privatized fu lling me from the bru that I am older, I am sta hand cannot draw. It can only e mountains and oceans, as I lie here in W to draw er. I made gho og, on the canvas. gles as mountains, the ce the page, never forgetting the a circle at the up signs were there for walkable paths. I sniffled and and I mourned when the turpen mes, a haze of familiar dizziness, pu shes and the oils. Now rting to accept that this write of what has become of th the dark. While my mother has sketc hed her groves so true, she has stepped beyond the choked, hot frame, and vanished

• into pain tre
• Rhanydell Bien Baysa the ted es.
• Rhanydell Bien Baysa

Adil Hafezn

My object is water, water doesn't necessarily change over seasons, but we tend to see a lot more of it as the seasons pass. During summer we drink a lot more because of the heat, during autumn and winter rain drastically increases.

Leaves fall from trees during autumn, yet during spring they grow into their most beautiful form. Leaves during the winter are decorated with raindrops and snowflakes all while surviving the winter storms. Leaves in summer use the sunlight to shine and feed its roots, spring arrives and the leaves are trampled on by people's boots. We see that even leaves change, only we look past them and don't give them the flowers they deserve.

It used to be this easy, gold meant harvest, brown meant rest and green meant beginnings. Now all I see is black and white. I start a new beginning but harvest thoughts of the past that now hold me back. Should I dispose of them? Why should I dispose of something that allows me to rest? Or is that the test I'm failing? Allowing such thoughts to fester would destroy a soul's habitual home. Frozen crop, green but tainted in broken testimonies, it used to be this easy, now I'm surrounded by oblivion.

Adil Hafezji

Adil Hafezji

The human body is made up of 90% water which means it requires water to survive.

Water is a living essential for all living organisms. The sound of water means safety.

The sea can be used as a means of transportation.

Fire has been essential in keeping us warm through winter, cooking food for us to eat and transporting us on boats and trains.

Fire has been used to light up dark spaces for its bright nature trait, fire and lava has created new lands, substances and places for humans to settle.

Fire has constructive effects like soil formation, land creation and nutrient cycling.

Battle-sweat dripping upon the soil, Covering each grain in foil, Nutrients fed to the land, Fire creates just like oil.

Adil Hafezji

Island to Island

The noise of the crowd, oh so loud, yet magical. Strangers sing and stand and scream but we are family, yet I have no connection to my neighbour. What's his story? What's her name? So different yet the bond we're the same. Home is where the heart is, so treat my heart like your own, don't treat me like a guest.

Final poem submission:

And some days i lose my passion, the noise is louder than ever. Voices screaming on top of one another. So where do I belong? My blood being snatched by the traffic of life saying you're your part of the rat race. So while the poetry drifts away I give chase. And I breathe and breathe in desperation. I'm desperate for peace. Let the summit be my saving grace, holding me above all mankind, let the stars fall from space, and my soul feel that all is fine. And the spark ignites when peace returns like an old friend. And the pieces are matched, I begin to mend.

Adil Hafezji

Adil Hafezji

Nene Cadiog

Where Mama is, that is home.

Before dawn, fog kisses the soil, lingering in the kadkad and alnus trees, lingering in furrows and on terrace edges, soft as her hands, steady as her voice.

The air tastes of wet earth, barako nga kape, and aluminum cup. Her hands, roughened by planting, pulling, tending, are still warm when they brush mine.

She cried when the crop died, silent tears mixing with mud, her sorrow folded into the earth she loves.

Weather shifts fast here— a sudden downpour drums the sisim, wind scours the terracesbut inside, her presence holds the day steady, a dap-o against the chill.

And when the heat dies from the dap-ayan, the uling stays warm, like her.

Even the mist, curling and concealing, cannot hide what I know:

• where Mama is, I am grounded;
• where Mama is, I am home.
• Nene Cadiog
• Nene Cadiog

I sit at dawn, The Vegetable Gardener watching the fog curl over the terraces, white threads over green ribs of the valley. One typhoon last week, one dry spell after, and still, the soil waits.

My mother moves in the uma, hands worn, palms split and red, pressing seeds into the earth with a quiet certainty. Her fingers know the soil like it knows her. Row after row of repolyo, patatas― each furrow a small offering, each seed a silent promise.

I would not plant today.

I am not her.

I have pen and paper, and words that dig differently.

But the terraces remember her:

the weight of her arms, the rhythm of her knees, the way she bends and hums without asking for a witness.

The terraces are stitched into the mountain, and she tends them with patience like a prayer.

Rain falls too little or too much, yet she returns, again and again, carrying panserado, tools of survival, tools of devotion, each one pressed into the soil as if into a heartbeat.

I watch her pause, listen to the wind, the river below, the small whisper of leaves.

Every furrow is a question, every seed a hope folded into soil.

I have seen her wrestle the earth, flattened by typhoons, scorched by sun, yet she bends again, Island to Island

pulls up weeds, lays mulch, presses another seed into the stubborn earth. Her work is quiet.

There are no witnesses.

Only the terraces and the mountain know.

I taste the dry dust on my tongue.

I remember the smell of wet soil, the sweat on her back, the low hum of the morning, broken only by birds and the pine trees.

I am writing.

She is digging.

She presses the world into shape, hands in the soil, back to the sky.

I press my thoughts onto paper.

And yet, tomorrow, I will pick up the hoe, walk into the uma, kneel, and plant.

Not like her, but because the land asks.

Because the mountain keeps its own time.

I plant, and I remember.

plant, and I hope.

Each row, each seed, a line of continuity from hand to hand, from mother to child, from mountain to valley.

• Manmula kami kasin.
• We plant again. ###
• Nene Cadiog
• Nene Cadiog

The Word for Soil is Never Just One Word luta luta luta and suddenly the ground speaks Kankanaey, soft vowels sprinkled like early rain.

daga daga daga the Ilokano tongue thickens it, gives the earth a heavier heartbeat.

Tagalog smooths the edges, lets the soil roll off the mouth like a familiar road.

erde erde erde a colder sound, like boots sinking into wet ground in another continent.

tierra tierra tierra sun-warmed, dust-bitten, a word that smells of open fields and footsteps.

'aina

'aina

'āina a breath, a vow, land as mother, land as memory.

Island to Island

the old name, the earth before we started arguing about who owned what.

And when these words stack, when they echo each other in different accents, the soil stops being soil it becomes history, it becomes everyone's story, it becomes a reminder that language shifts but the ground stays, listening, holding every name we give it.

Nene Cadiog

Nene Cadiog