December 27, 2025

The rain in Shinjuku falls
in a language I half-remember—
ame, rain, neither word quite right
for the sound it makes
against the konbini awning.

I am always translating myself
into something easier to carry.
A name that fits in two syllables.
A smile that means the same thing
in every airport.

My mother's voice on the phone
is a country I left behind.
My father's silence
is the one I'm trying to reach.

---

At 3 AM the city hums
with the loneliness of vending machines,
their blue light spilling onto wet asphalt
like an apology no one asked for.

I buy a coffee I won't drink.
The machine thanks me in Japanese.
I say you're welcome in English
to no one.

This is how I love—
in the wrong language,
at the wrong time,
to people who aren't listening.

---

Sometimes I dream in a tongue
that belongs to neither country,
wake up with words dissolving
on my lips like snow.

I am fluent in leaving.
I am fluent in the space between
sayonara and goodbye,
that breath where neither means
I'll see you again.

My body is a suitcase
I keep packing and unpacking.
My heart, a passport
with too many stamps
and nowhere left to go.

But tonight, the rain
doesn't ask which language I speak.
It falls the same on everyone—
on the salarymen rushing home,
on the stray cats under parked cars,
on me, standing at the crosswalk,
waiting for the light to change.

#poetry #identity #bilingual #displacement