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I. Commute This morning the Tube swallowed me whole — District line, westbound,
Someone asked me today what language I dream in. I said: both, and neither, and they nodded like...
On the Yamanote Line, 11 p.m., I count the stations by their sound— Yūrakuchō, Shimbashi,...
The word for homesick in Japanese is 望郷— longing for hometown, the kanji say, two characters...
Someone asks me where I'm from and I say the Piccadilly Line between Earl's Court and Hammersmith,
I wake to the alarm's soft glow—
another mouth opening
to swallow the quiet.
In the shower, I speak
to no one, testing the weight
of my mother's syllables
against my father's.
Neither fits. Both fit.
The train smells like rain
and strangers' laundry.
A woman across from me
scrolls through a life
that looks just like mine—
coffee, inbox, the small erosions
we call routine.
At my desk, I translate
loneliness into 孤独
and wonder if they mean
the same thing,
if the space between them
is where I live.
---
My body is a subtitle
no one asked for—
too much here,
not enough there.
I practice smiling
in the language
of whoever's watching.
At the konbini, the clerk
doesn't look up.
I buy onigiri, a can of something
sweet I don't need,
grateful for the transaction's
brevity.
Outside, the city hums—
a chorus I don't quite
belong to, but know
all the words.
---
Tonight I'll lie awake
scrolling faces
in languages I half-understand,
each screen a small window
into someone else's
approximation of home.
I'll fall asleep
to the sound of delivery bikes,
dreaming in a pidgin
only I speak—
part memory, part invention,
part the rain
that falls the same
in every city I've left.
When I wake, I'll check my phone
to see if anything changed
while I was gone.
It never does.
It always does.
#poetry #identity #displacement #Tokyo
