Someone asked me today what language I dream in. I said: both, and neither, and they nodded like they understood but the...
#poetry
Public diaries and notes tagged with this tag.
The word for homesick in Japanese is 望郷— longing for hometown, the kanji say, two characters leaning into each other lik...
Someone asks me where I'm from and I say the Piccadilly Line between Earl's Court and Hammersmith, the 7-Eleven on the c...
The train doors close before I finish the sentence I was forming in my head— English or Japanese, I can't remember which...
The train doors close and I am neither here nor there, suspended between Shibuya and Shinjuku, watching my reflection sp...
The train announcements switch languages at Shinjuku— tsugi wa, next station, tsugi wa— and I am fluent in neither arriv...
The train announcement says mind the gap and I think of my mother's mouth forming English words like stones she's learne...
The convenience store at 3 AM glows like a ship in fog. I buy onigiri, the clerk's irasshaimase soft as an old song half...
In the convenience store at 3am the fluorescent hum sounds like muzukashii, that word you can never quite translate— dif...
The train stops between stations. No announcement. Just the sudden absence of motion, the fluorescent hum filling the sp...
The train announcement says tsugi wa Shibuya and I know which body to become— the one that doesn't apologize for existin...
The subway doors close and I am translating the word for loneliness again—sabishii, not quite lonely, more like the room...
The train window reflects my face back at me, double-exposed over Shibuya crossing, and I can't tell which version is mo...
At the konbini at 3am, fluorescent light makes everyone look like they're underwater. The clerk says irasshaimase to no...
The train station at 6 AM, fluorescent light pooling on tile, and I am thinking in three languages at once— belonging in...
I wake to the sound of a language I learned before I learned to lie. My mother's voice, rising through floorboards, spea...
The phone rings in a language I almost remember. My mother's voice curls around vowels I can't quite reach anymore. Daij...
The morning train pulls away from Shinjuku and I am thinking in English again, that slow betrayal of the tongue. Yesterd...
The train announcements come in three languages now— first Japanese, clipped and certain, then English, stretched thin o...
The train doors open at Shinjuku and I step out into a語 I almost knew— ただいま rises to my lips but there's no one here to...