On the Jubilee Line, 7 a.m. The woman across from me is sleeping with her cheek pressed to the cold...
January 13, 2026
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On the Jubilee Line, 7 a.m. The woman across from me is sleeping with her cheek pressed to the cold...
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...
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