Song from the Edge of Tanimbar
The Story of Yuliana Ratuanak
By: Rizal Tanjung
Translated: Anna Keiko
–
I.
At the eastern edge, often forgotten by the maps,
lie the Tanimbar Islands—a mosaic of coral and old seas
breathing in silence.
The wind here is not mere air;
it is the voice of ancestors,
whispering spells into strands of hair,
delivering soft prayers
that crawl through the sea grass.
From veils of sand and the sobs of night,
Yuliana Ratuanak was born—
not merely human,
but daughter of the ocean and whispered prayer.
She rose from dreams lulled in sand,
from coral faithful to waves,
from nights that forgot to sleep.
When Yuliana walked, the earth bowed,
afraid it might crack.
At her laughter, clouds embraced,
so the sun might gaze clearly.
She never asked about her father,
never challenged the sky.
She sat at the edge of the pier,
speaking to young lorikeets and tiny fish,
singing wordless songs—
yet all creatures understood.
The village called her child of God—
not for miracles,
but because her gaze held a love
that no scripture could contain.
She embraced the grieving,
offering a sliver of hope:
when a mother lost her baby to the storm,
Yuliana brought a single damp strand of hair—
a sign the child had returned
to the galaxy of stars.
When the camera turned, she only said:
> “If I am God’s child,
then every crying child in a mother’s arms
is God’s child too.
The only difference is how light kisses our skin.”
The camera muted.
Digital voices fell silent.
Tanimbar night wept gently
beneath a rain summoned by whales—
the first in forty years.
Nature whispered:
a love untouched by human hands.
Then, Yuliana vanished.
Her footprints led into the sea,
and the scent of tender coconuts lingered.
But she never truly left.
Every child’s cry,
every silent stare at the horizon—
is her presence.
She is a wing of light
passing through soundless night,
touching wounds,
singing the song of the soul.
II.
North of Yamdena Island,
the forest never sleeps.
Leaves stir in night’s arms.
There, Yuliana listened—
to roots, to plants,
to spirits hiding behind old fig trees.
She spoke to moss soft as infant skin,
sitting for hours,
awaiting the moment
to summon hidden time.
When dusk rotted
with the scent of sunken ships,
she asked a broken flying fish:
> “Can the sea love
without drowning?”
A dolphin leapt—
a single burst across twilight swamp—
an answer without words.
That night, the ocean stilled,
as if grief’s umbrella
was held by a mother
who knows her child won’t return
but waits anyway.
Yuliana stayed awake.
She drew a stranger’s face in the sand—
eyes deep black,
a palm-leaf scroll in hand,
a voice that revived dead trees.
She didn’t know him.
Perhaps God.
Perhaps her father.
Or only longing in disguise.
Then came news—
a boat burned on the distant island.
Flames danced into the faces of children,
and the sky wept saltwater tears.
That night, the forest sang
with rivers climbing against gravity.
Yuliana followed the current
to the summit of a great rock,
where silence completed her prayer.
She raised her hands:
> “If love is an unseen wound,
let me bleed for the world.”
The sky cracked.
Rain fell upon her alone.
A night orchid bloomed from stone.
Tiny footprints remained.
If your heart is honest,
you’ll find them
in every coral stone.
III.
One evening,
the wind carried a man from the north—
wrapped in cloth
painted with stars and ancestral shells
from a vanished harbor.
The village was wary,
but Yuliana knew:
he was a verse
left unwritten in the books of wind.
He said:
> “I am searching for an unfinished song.”
She replied:
> “I am the verse no scripture could hold.”
Without a touch, the world shifted:
roots deepened,
rivers cleared,
fish returned dancing
to the warm, open sea.
Their love was like the ocean—
not caged,
but diveable.
She told him:
> “If you must leave,
leave your voice behind.
I’ll hang it on a tree
so the children may hear
when the wind passes.”
He asked:
> “And if I stay?”
She smiled:
> “Then you will know—
home is not always walls.
Sometimes, home is someone
who sits silently beside you.”
That night, the village exploded in quiet:
mothers played bamboo flutes,
children sang love in the language of wind.
Some said he left.
Others believed he stayed—
guardian of the song
so the world would not fall mute.
Because in Tanimbar,
love needs no reason.
It grows from soil,
water,
air.
Yuliana Ratuanak
was longing that gives.
IV.
Time in Tanimbar is not marked by clocks—
but by falling coconuts,
the taste of water,
and the fading moon.
Yuliana faded from sight,
becoming song
on the rocks
greeting the waves.
People asked:
> “Has our Sea Sister grown sad?”
Ama Tenias answered:
> “If the sea loves you,
it won’t take you.
It will only make you
its shadow on the shore.”
On a full-moon night,
the stranger returned.
His hair turned white,
his body light—
carrying only memories.
He searched for Yuliana
through forest, river, hill.
He found only a bamboo flute
hung on a tree,
and a palm leaf etched with words:
> “I did not choose to leave.
I only returned
to where the light was born.”
He wept—
not for loss,
but for the truth:
true love never stays.
It only leaves a sweet wound.
He built a hut
on the village edge.
Every night,
he wrote one line for Yuliana
on banana leaves—
then burned them,
lifting smoke to the sky
where she might still laugh.
The flute played faintly
in the bright night.
Children sometimes saw
a white girl dancing on the water.
Sometimes, parrots repeated her name:
> “Yu-li-a-na…”
The sea murmured it—
softly,
with reverence,
like a prayer.
V.
Tanimbar watches as time spreads its wings.
Among rustling bamboo
and rumbia wet with dew,
Yuliana’s name trembles—
she has become song
that grows inside chests,
not on lips.
Children born ten storms later
still call her “Sister of the Sea.”
Stars are her eyes,
leaping fish, her kisses,
rainbows, her necklace from the sky.
In a school built from shipwrecked planks,
the teacher writes her name—
but every child already knows:
> “Yuliana is what remains
after all loss finishes weeping.”
Night becomes altar,
house pillars become prayer posts.
The ketapang trees thrive,
and dogs no longer howl
when the moon is full.
They just sit,
facing the sea—
because love needs no explanation.
It has become air.
If you hear a child
singing alone in the morning,
or see a girl
writing in the sand
then erasing it herself—
be still.
They are speaking to Yuliana.
To a song
that never dies.
VI.
> “To the world that sometimes forgets how to love,
To the sky that holds the voices of children,
And to Yuliana—who never truly left…”
The final night in La’uhi fell like a soft cloth from the heavens.
The sea breeze was more than salt—it was a lullaby,
a mother’s breath mourning her vanished child.
The village sat at the edge of the dock,
gazing deep into their own hearts.
Since Yuliana disappeared,
the ocean was no longer just water—
it had become a mirror of souls, incapable of lying.
Upon its surface:
a child’s shadow sat upon the waves,
her hair rising like mist,
her eyes not merely reflecting light—
they were the light itself.
There were no statues, no temples, no grand ceremonies.
Because true love needs no monument—
it lives in the everyday:
in the splitting and sharing of sweet potatoes,
in a hand softly placed on a head,
in prayers without names,
in silence that knows how to listen.
City folk came,
carrying drones and theories.
They said Yuliana was just a myth—
a collective delusion.
But that night,
a whale surfaced,
the rain fell,
and all their theories were swallowed
by a silence wiser than science.
Children wrote letters to Yuliana—
on coconut husks,
in sand licked by the tide—
because what truly matters
always arrives without an address.
One night, Kalem,
a boy who had just lost his mother,
stood at the edge of the sea.
His body small,
but his eyes dared to confront God.
The wind arrived, speaking:
> “You are not alone.
I am every embrace you’ve not yet received.
I am every lullaby a mother could not sing tonight.
I am you… enduring,
even when tomorrow is not promised.”
His tears did not shatter—
they fell like dew:
honest, silent, luminous.
Today, in Tanimbar…
A whale rises.
A parrot speaks in a child’s voice.
A baby smiles for no reason.
A young woman draws circles in the sand—
waiting for the waves.
And the sea whispers:
> “Yuliana never vanished.
She is everything gentle left in this world.”
If one day you sail to Tanimbar and ask,
“Where is Yuliana’s home?”
They will point to your heart.
Because her home is in every place
that dares to love unconditionally,
every voice that comforts without being perfect,
every wound soothed not by vengeance—
but by an embrace.
Yuliana is a child of God—
yes.
But more than that,
she is tenderness itself,
when God chooses to believe in love without conditions.
And tonight,
in the stillness of the ocean,
beneath the full moon’s presence,
perhaps you will hear her whisper:
> “I am you.
And you are never alone.
We are all children of light—
even if God kisses us each in different ways.”
West Sumatra, 2025.
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