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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 watch my mother's hands
fold paper cranes at the kitchen table
in Ealing, West London,
each crease a word she can't say
in English. She hums a melody
from Yokohama, 1970-something,
and I think: this is what it means
to live translated—
every gesture a gloss,
every silence annotated.
---
The District line at 6 AM
still smells like last night's bodies.
A man sleeps against the window,
his breath fogging the glass.
I want to tell him: daijoubu,
you're not the only one
drifting between stations,
mistaking motion for arrival.
In Tokyo, they have a word: ma—
the space between things,
the pause that holds meaning.
Here, we just call it waiting.
---
My grandmother sends voice messages
I play at half-speed to understand.
She asks if I'm eating enough rice,
if the air is cold,
if I remember the shape of her garden.
I lie in both languages.
---
Some mornings I wake up
and don't know which self
slept in this bed.
The one who dreams in hiragana,
or the one who thinks in Underground maps.
There's a third self, maybe,
who speaks in line breaks—
who knows that home
is not a place
but the syntax of return:
conditional, subjunctive,
never quite present tense.
#poetry #identity #belonging #bilingual
