Someone asks me where I'm from
and I say the Piccadilly Line
between Earl's Court and Hammersmith,
the 7-Eleven on the corner of Shibuya Station
where I bought onigiri at 2 a.m.,
the gap between here and there,
the pause before I answer.

I live in the comma,
the breath between sentences
when switching languages mid-thought—
naruhodo slipping into I see,
my tongue a turnstile
spinning both ways.

Home is not a place
but a syntax error,
a word that exists in one language
and dissolves in another.
Natsukashii—nostalgia
but warmer, more specific,
the ache of returning
to something that was never
fully yours.

---

At the translator's desk, midnight.
The city hums its fluorescent hymn.
I am converting
loneliness into 孤独
but they are not the same—
one is an empty room,
the other, chosen solitude,
a door you close yourself.

The client wants equivalence.
I give them approximation,
the closest breath,
the nearest sigh.

Some nights I forget
which language I dream in.
I wake with a word
lodged in my throat
that belongs to neither tongue,
a sound that means
I was here
and I am leaving
at the same time.

Outside, the train pulls away.
Someone is going home.
Someone is just arriving.
I am both.
I am neither.

#poetry #identity #language #belonging